WollyBear Festival

Now that we are back in Vermilion we have to attend the annual Wollybear festival.  I'm sure you are so curious…what is a wollybear?  Landon thought it was a very fuzzy bear!  They are caterpillars that determine the weather.  Coincidentally, the grand marshall of the festival is the very famous local meteorologist who is older than dirt, Dick Goddard.
The festival is quite the talk around town and usually we leave town because it is crazy crowded.  Now that the kids are older we decided to take them to all the fun.  It starts with "World's Greatest Kid Race" at the track.  Carter and Landon were more than stoked about participating and winning the race.  Danielle came up with her kids and we trucked over to the track.  We surprised Maw Maw and Jill Bob at the race.  Thank goodness they were there to help corral all 5 children among the hundreds of people.

 Nolan ran his little heart out.  When they said go…he took off for the finish line!

Track stars at an early age.

Landon is in the background left in a light blue shirt.  Instead of running in a straight line, he ran across the track in hopes of running around everyone in front of him.

Carter ran with the 5-6 group.  They had the kids run a full 200 meters (half the track).  I thought that was quite a way to run but first they made the kids run to the other side of the track to start and then race to the finish line.  Carter finished 5th because he was 5 years old…that's what he said.  It was such a cool event watching these kids run.

Let's be honest this is by far the worst mascot costume…Wolly the Wollybear.  Carter was so happy to have his picture taken with him.

After the race we went back to our house to eat lunch and play until the parade began at 1pm.  After waiting in stopped traffic for over 40 minutes with 5 small children we decided the festival would have to wait another year.  Instead we went to Quarry Hill Orchard to pick apples.  

Popcorn munchin'

Landon and Nolan were inspecting the apples that had fallen from the trees…at least he wasn't eating the dog's peach again.

Oh the amount of one bite apples that we collected would blow your mind!

Afternoon snack

Love watching the boys enjoy the fall season

Aunt D snuggling on Lincoln

Jill Bob leads the troops to the car! 

Next we found a little nature hike in the woods.

These two boys are best of buds.  Don't you love how Nolan is topless. He had a meltdown about his shirt so I took it off and then later noticed he was being eaten alive by mosquitoes which didn't seem to bother him at all.

Fun in the Outdoors.