Fall Festival at the Monastery

Tim and several of our guy friends chaperoned a youth group retreat this weekend.  I convinced my friend Ashley (whose husband was also a chaperone) to accompany Matthan and me to the fall festival at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers.  

Matthan was VERY excited to see his "Ms. Ashley".  The first thing Matthan noticed was a bunch of kiddie pools with rubber duckies in them.  One of those "pick a ducky, get a prize" things.

The boy loves water, so of course he gravitated towards this fountain.  I had to make sure that he didn't fall in while attempting to reach the water.

There were several venders with crafts and handmade items.  Ashley and I share an affinity for used books, and Matthan, well, he just loves books.  While we perused, Matthan promptly found a Matthan-sized book and sat down to "read".

His face made me laugh

The festival included a kids area with face painting, petting zoo, puppet show, etc.  The petting zoo included goats, a llama, a pig, fan-tailed pigeons, an armadillo, and a miniature donkey. 

We've never been this close to an armadillo before

We sat down for the bird show, and two minutes later decided the show was not going to hold our attention, much less Matthan's.  But we turned around, and to Matthan's great excitement, there were HUGE bubbles.  Somebody did a happy dance.

I think he was excited ;)

We grabbed some lunch and plopped down to eat by the "ducky pools".  While we ate, Matthan ran around the pools picking up the ducks and throwing them back in to splash, while occasionally returning for some food.

I had been keeping my eye on Matthan while I ate.  I turned my back for just a minute, and when I turned back around, Matthan had climbed into the ducky pool.  I sprinted across the little lawn to pull my now wet child out of the pool.  

Letting my boy sun dry

I had some spare clothes with us, but I didn't have extra shoes.  I put his socks on the handles of the stroller and his shoes on the top shade of the stroller to dry.  We perused the gift shop and then headed over to the church (see picture at the top of this post).  The church is beautiful.  The inside is white marble (?  I think it's marble) with blue and purple stained glass windows which creates a beautiful "under water" effect.  Matthan was so sweet and quiet while we spent a few peaceful moments in the church.

One hour past nap time

Then we headed down to the lake, at which time I realized that Matthan's shoes were missing.  We had to back track and search our steps before we finally found the shoes scattered along the path we had traveled to the church.  After a quick trip to the lake...because there were geese...taller than Matthan... and they looked hungry... we headed home.  Matthan didn't make it out of the parking lot before his head drooped to sleep.