Kids' Day!

A whole bunch of local goodness rolled into one big event, that's what we got when we went to the recent Kids' Day held at the Armory.  I did find it a little odd that a fun event for kids was being held at a place where they ostensibly manufacture and assemble ammunition, but Andy assured me that it was more of a gathering place for the local military than a factory for stuff that blows up.  So we went.  

The girls were really excited to check out everything, and even managed to be mostly herded together most of the time.
Here they are checking out one of the local Sheriff cars.   I can't imagine getting pulled over by this car with flames on it, so hopefully they don't hang out around our preschool or Target.   Annika was completely infatuated with the Police Dog. This may have been the first German Shepherd I ever met that wasn't named Schatzi, although he did still have a very nice German name: Axel.  To be honest, I may have seen too many WWII movies to actually appreciate this breed of dog, but he seemed to be perfectly nice.  
Annika was really excited to meet the Ice Bear mascot.  Mayzie was less excited, but Silas (their 2 year old cousin) was devastatingly frightened of the thing.  The event was held in the armory gym with tables surrounding the floor, and Silas clutched his father almost the entire time scared to death of being mauled by man dressed as a polar bear.  Poor kid must have been traumatized at Disney.  
Thankfully there were blow-up things to bounce on.   Here's Mayzie on the giant twister blow up bouncer.  
This was extremely hilarious to watch, mostly because of the people that were running it.  You would think that they had never been around children under the age of 5.  They would let the kids all get on the bouncer, after they signed a waiver and got their stamp of course. (Oh America!)  They let them jump for about 5 minutes, and then would yell at everyone to stop.  They then proceeded to try to run a gigantic twister game with 20 odd kids on this giant thing.  Inevitably 2-5 of the kids would insist on continuing the jumping fun.  They tried to yell at the kids to stop and then would start passing out dirty looks to the parents of the offending children.  I just laughed at the attempt to control the kid chaos, which got me some really lovely sidelong glares from several other parents.  This always makes me laugh even harder.  Seriously people, get a grip.  It is NOT that big of a deal.  
(Side note: This always makes me think of that GREAT scene from the 1989 movie Parenthood when their youngest kid runs on the stage thus "ruining" his sister's play and some parents are laughing while others get upset, all the while a roller coaster effect goes on in the film.  This is one of my favorite movie scenes EVER, and I highly highly recommend the movie for all parents if you haven't seen it.  Also, the series on TV that is very loosely based on it!)  
Annika, the girl who wants to be a Vet when she grows up, spent the most amount of time at the ASPCA table.  They had two dogs there, and we are very lucky that we didn't get persuaded to take one home.
She was completely obsessed with this one, and stood there talking to it and giving it treats.   All in all, it was a great outing for us as a family.  One of the best parts of living in Evansville is how family oriented the entire town is.  We are always finding new things to explore with our kids, and there are so many events that are family-centric.  We're really excited to keep exploring.