Sand and Fairy Dust

This weekend, we hit a couple of Fests, although I have been juggling OB call.

 

On Saturday afternoon, we headed to the Samoa Drag Strip, where this year's Sand Sculpture Festival was held. We'd visited the Manila Dunes in 2015 and  2017 to see the impressive sand creations and mistakenly were under the impression that this year's fest was in the same location, but arrived late to an empty parking lot and were redirected to the location farther south. 

The octopus was impressive

 

Crab

 

Man in the Sand

Reclining guy

Iver (and Pepper) had a blast in the sand dunes

 

Niall enjoyed testing out the wet sand... he was a bit cautious

It's so awesome we live so close to the ocean, although our "beach temps" are quite cool.

On Sunday, we attended Arcata's second consecutive "Fairy Festival." We weren't quite sure what to expect, but it was a nice sunny day and good to get the kids out of the house. We just started reading Peter Pan so Iver has been interested in Tinker Bell (in addition to his love of other Disney characters, mostly princesses).

There were tons of people dressed in costume-- many fairies with wings ("Hey! Why didn't you guys get me fairy wings?!" asked Iver), trolls, a leprechaun, mermaids, unicorns, and other mystical creatures. There was a band and dancing. There were booth, food, and play areas.

 A werewolf?

Ariel!

A mama and baby unicorn

Watching the costume judging intently

Next year, we'll try to show up in some wings!

Best of (blueberries, sun) Humboldt

We had a lovely cloudless and sunny two days of Humboldt summer (the best it gets here). While Kelvin had to go down to LA for a regional conference for work, we flew his parents up to enjoy some time with the grandchildren during a busy couple of weeks for us (upcoming call for me and daycare closure over the July 4th week).

 Here is truly one of the best grandpas there is with little Niall

We spent Saturday afternoon at the "Best of Humboldt" Fair at Redwood Acres. It was the third year going for us, mainly because kids are enamored with the animals (see previous posts from 2017 and 2018).

Wallaby

Great Horned Owl 

 Armadillo

Porcupine

Barnyard goats

Iver couldn't wait to get back to the reptiles!

Petting a Tegu

Up close and personal

"Nature Joe" was there with Luther the tortoise, who also attends birthday parties!

 

 Lincoln and Ada joined us

 

Iver was so excited to pet the boas

 

Lincoln was brave!

 

Then on Sunday, we had another joint outing with the Johnsons to Noble Blueberry Farm for our fourth annual blueberry picking fest which always ends up being near the July 4th weekend, and often when my in-laws are in town (Here are the links for 2016, 2017, and 2018 visits!)

Iver was very intent on getting the "very blue, almost purple" ones.

"When you see the ones with some brown on them, that means they are not good." (missed their picking window!)

 

Niall was way more into eating his favorite fruit ("More blue!" he kept saying)-- requesting to eat some out of the can à la Blueberries for Sal, rather than doing any picking.

 

 

Straddling the boundary

Racing with Jonathan.

We weighed, and paid, and enjoyed a few minutes in the shade (Fieldbrook, about 15 min away, is about 10 degrees warmer than our place on the coast).

It was a a sunny success.  And I must report that my pollen goggles are working spectacularly to let me enjoy some of this weather and the great outdoors, without being down for the count with swollen eyeballs the rest of the day. Hooray!