Calling all the Children Home

That's the title of one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite musicians at bluegras...John McCutcheon...he's actually a folk singer, not bluegrass. There's a new song by him in my playlist...called "I am Here" if you want to hear his stuff...it's a good one for baseball fans (well, kind of).

Bluegrass for me is kind of like going home. Well, it WAS my home...Winfield, that is.


I wish I could figure out exactly how many years I've been going...but I do remember having my 10th birthday out there, so I know it's been at least 17 years in a row. NEVER MISSED!


For Dave and I, it was our 6th year, Taylor's 2nd and Mason's 1st!



Some major things were working against us this year...

FIRST, no camping allowed due to this:This was taken just a few days before the festival started...AFTER the mandatory evacuation of all campers!


Luckily, we have friends we can always stay with, so we didn't have to worry about a place to stay.

Usually the entire fairgrounds, every where you look, looks like this:This year, everywhere you looked, it looked like this (luckily the water was gone just in time for the festival to begin!)Second, I was getting over being sick and Dave had the beginning stages of pneumonia...pretty sure people thought we were crazy for going.



I have always been so lucky, Dave is awesome when it comes to packing things up for trips...he does so much. I stick to getting my clothes and the kids' clothes and he usually takes care of the rest. The day we were trying to leave, he was not able to do much of anything other than sit...so if we were gonna go, it was up to me! It took me hours...but I got everything packed...clothes, coolers with snacks and drinks, baby supplies, blankets, and LOTS more!



We finally made it to the festival on Friday afternoon!

Here's the main stage...you saw a different view at the beginning of this post with all the water. Water was up to the stage and covering the ground where you now see all the people!



It's ok to laugh at Mason in this picture...I did. Yet again, another one of his crazy-faced photos!

On Saturday, we just planned to go with the flow of our kids...not knowing how they would do all day, and especially without being somewhere for Taylor to take a nap.



Well, to our surprise...

She slept for almost an hour and a half! This of course helped the rest of the day!

Our friends, Brent and Alyssa came on Saturday to get their first taste of the festival. We were excited to have them with us!

Enjoying music at our favorite stage on the hill...

fitting...
Finally, a picture that we don't have to laugh about! We weren't sure how late we'd get to stay, depending on how the kids did past their bedtime. AGAIN, to our HUGE surprise, this is the way they finished the night! We got to enjoy the festival till 11:00pm!! What SUPER kids!So, another year of Bluegrass over and done. It was quite a different year...having both our kids with us, Dave who was fighting pneumonia, not having camp right there to go back and lounge, no Stage 5 (they relocated to the lake), my mom and dad didn't make it this year, we didn't get to see most of the friends my parents camp with every year due to them being spread out in all different places due to the evacuation, we were there for only 1/2 the amount of time we usually are....BUT, it was still GREAT as always!

We can now start the countdown for next year!