Being Aedan's and Amelia's Mom: August 2008

Every year for the past 9 years Andrew and I have made the pilgrimage to our August camping vacation called Pennsic War. Basically a medival tent city of over 10,000 people sets up ,camps out, parties like its 1399. That means singing, camp fires , eating great food, story telling, shopping, bartering, and of course fighting a war!

This year we had the pleasure of bringing Aedan to such an amazing experience.It was a bit of a head spin for me to figure out everything we would need to bring to keep not only us, but out 18 month old comfortable.

He slept well to the drums which kept ringing out through the night until 3AM. He played with many children in camp, saw many sights that I'm sure most will never see in a life time.... and of course, stuck to mommy like glue.So I didn't get to take all the pictures I hoped to take - but here is a mild sampling of the things we saw at war.

This is one of my favourite views. In the mornings I love to take a walk around the lake and see the camps bordering the water

This is the "gate" to RAven Spittle - A camp of pirates. They are near to our camp and you can guess this was one of Aedan's favourite attractions

Camp life isn't without some trickery. Last year in our camp about 50 pink flamingos were placed while we were all asleep in the night. they became camp pets, and at the end of camp were packed up... this year we brought them out again, many went missing as the week went on - but we also found out they were fertile. About 4 dozen pink hardboiled eggs were "laid" all over camp while we slept. It made for a great breakfast.

Naturally it was like a second Easter for Aedan

After all the eggs were collected and we had a wonderful breakfast... the kids broke out the bubble machine and had a tonne of fun!

Aedan loves bubbles!

As fate would have it - the bubble machine died - no amount of shaking tapping and banging brought it back to life and the kids were a little sad.

One of the nights we went up to the shopping area - and were lucky enough to catch a very cool fire show! Aedan learned to say "fire" or "eye-er" as he calls it.

Here are some of the shops at night - it was very beautiful!

When Daddy went shopping he found a pretty cool dragon puppet by Melisa and Doug - naturally it became Aedans cool Dragon puppet

Then there is the main event - FIGHTING.

these are pics of the big melee field battle on Friday. Hundreds of people on each team - one side against the other. They line up, a cannon blows and the fighting begins.

This is the first Year Andrew didn't fight, It was a year he dedicated to hanging with Aedan... but since the squee was stuck on me, Andrew took these pictures

Aedan loved the fighting! He kept asking for "more" everytime they finished a battle and had to wait a few minutes for each side to reassemble.

Aedan had a lot of fun at Pennsic

Seriously - if you don't already - consider buying anything you "need" used from classified ads.

It's a goal of mine to not buy things new if I can help it.It takes a bit more effort, and patience, as well as planning. But It reduces waste, saves you money, makes someone else some pocket change and gets something out of their basement.

I keep a list of "wish list items" and a list of items that may need replacing in the next year due to wear and tear. I search classified ads such as kijiji , craigs list, and my local freecycle group almost daily.

and recently on kijiji, we found a wish list item for Aedan for only $75. A train table, with storage baskets underneath.track, the round house, bridges and trains. Anything plastic that you see on the table Aedan had already - the rest is from our kijiji find... and there is still tones of track and structure in the bins underneath not pictured.