kites+cooks+humphrey+corn dogs+lemonade+school bus ride+lines=best day ever!!!

I really wanted to go to the Zilker Kite Festival this year.  Wanted to take some photos, enjoy the outdoors with my boys, and now that Riley is old enough to enjoy something like this, we went for it.  Russ wasn't thrilled, but I convinced him we needed to go.

We didn't leave the house as early as I wanted to, but my mother in law volunteered to keep Kace and boy was I glad she did.

We arrived downtown to the parking garage to ride the shuttle to the festival.  As we pulled up, we saw school buses.  Riley was THRILLED to be riding a school bus.  We met some friends there who were willing to be adventurous with us.  Waited in line to get on the school bus 1 hour and 20 minutes.  The line wrapped around the entire parking garage, inside and out.  NICE...

Get to the Zilker Park, we're all starving, and head straight to a food vendor.  Get in line, standing there and overhear someone mention tickets.  Oh gosh, do we really have to have tickets?  Can't we just get a corndog and lemonade please?  Russ investigates....we need tickets.  We would manipulate the system and split up.  Some of us stayed in the corndog line while some of us went to the ticket line.  Aaah, the benefits of traveling in packs.

We're standing in the ticket line after a while of starving, realizing the line hasn't moved an inch.  Find out shortly afterwards that the ticket booth is out of tickets.  We're waiting on the ticket both to get tickets so we can get tickets so we can EAT.  This isn't the adventure I'd planned....Meanwhile, Russ bought tickets off someone getting rid of them so he could entertain Riley while we waited in MORE lines.  At least the 4 year old was happy!!

Called a member of the pack about the ticket situation...they're at the front of the line letting people go ahead of them because we still haven't arrived with the tickets.  Hearing people going by saying that all of the ticket booths are out of tickets.  Okay, so what do we have to do to get a corndog around here?  We leave the ticket line because the corndog folks are now accepting cash but they have no change.  As I'm ordering 3 corndogs and 3 lemonades, the cornie man (ha!) walks up to the counter and announces that he has 4 corndogs left.  (If I do the math right, that means I still get 3, right?)  With cordogs and lemonades in hand, we head to find the boys, sit on an extra large beach towel that I packed, and enjoy our long awaited lunch under the kites.  The best corndogs we ever ate.

After the corndog, we packed up to get back into the bus line.  Busses quit running at 5:30 and since it took almost an hour and half to get on the bus to get here....well, it could easily happen again.  So....back to the lines we go.  Russ and Riley had a little more fun while we held our place in line...and our ride back to the truck.

Through the drama, we had lots of smiles, enjoyed the wonderful weather, and admired the beauty of downtown Austin.  Mandy said it best, "kites+cooks+humphrey+corn dogs+lemonade+school bus ride+lines=best day ever!!!"  Thanks Mandy, I think I have a new title.

Looking forward to next year, right Babe?