Missing in Action

Soooo I have been very busy and have not kept up with our blog. We have had Mothers day excitement and Monster truck shows!!! Pictures to follow sorry about not posting I am trying to create time for more writing.!!!

NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH

I used to hate that saying in my economics class in college. My professor explained there really is no such thing as a free lunch and guess what he was right. (I HATE YOU Mr. Kimball FOR BEING RIGHT)Since we live in LA, which is very expensive just to live, we are always looking for low cost or free events to attend as a family on the weekends. This past weekend I thought I found the perfect event. It was called "The Festival of Books". It Claimed free events, meeting children's book authors and free crafts and shows. Yeah something fun for Christian, Todd and I to do; and it's free......


Wrong.




First off you need to pay $10 to park, which is somewhat expected, but come on $10 is still $10. Every author there wanted you to buy their book, and Every book was at least $20. Actually more expensive than buying the same book at Target. And there were not many free activities, those that were, seemed to be related to UCLA, and not to books at all.





The Whole thing seemed like a giant overpriced flea market with the authors hawking their wares like common festival barkers. Very Strange. There were over 150,000 thousand people there and very little space to move.



Christian did some free arts and crafts (coloring a UCLA Bruin) but got bored very quickly, so we had to move on.

I kept seeing all these people with cute bags and I wanted one. Where did they get them? Are they free? I want one now!!! Oh, I found the tent where they were, and they were 20 dollars. Dammit! I just wanted something for free from the "free" festival. Sad, but very true. As we were leaving, I got my wish, I found a company that was giving away a reusable shopping bag that mentioned the book fair. Yeah, justified!!!



As we are driving home from the festival of books so that Christian could take a nap, he fell asleep in the car. No big deal, we thought, he would still be down for another hour after we got home. No Such Luck. Apparently that brief nap in the car was enough for him, so while he got to rest, his long suffering parents did not. So Todd and I had a brain storming session about where we could go next for free. I look in my "LA Parent" magazine and find that there is a free festival for Earth Day at the "Eco Station". They called it "Earth Day For Children".

So we pile in the car for round two. When we got there we actually found a FREE PARKING space. This might just be alright. As soon as we entered there was a man holding a snake (the Eco Station is specifically related to teach children about Nature Exploration) it was a ten foot red tailed boa and Christian wanted to pet it, I think that this might be cool.

Oh, was I wrong. This was pretty much just food (vegan) and people selling stuff (like a caterpillar in a Dixie cup for $5, true story). Think a bad Turkish bazaar on a Hollywood back lot run by hippies, and you might get close. Again spending money. We walked around for a minute found another free bag!! Justice!!



After all that we walked across the street to a park and played in the warm Los Angeles Sun. Guess what. The park was free and Christian liked the slide, swings and fort much more than the book festival and the hippies.