The end of Summer and a busy August

It's the end of another Summer and a unique one at that. How often do you decide to adopt kids? It our case it is twice. We are one for two in that respect. Annya didn't want to come, while Leonid did. It is a shame we left the decision up to a twelve year old. I won't make that mistake again. Never again will I leave any decisions to a twelve year old. Should we go to war in the Middle East again, I will not ask a twelve year old to make the decision.

   In August we went to the beach and the Renaissances Faire and the Dutchess Country Fair. All within the same week or so.
   The Renaissance faire up in Sterling Forest, I have not been to since Scott, Tony's (pop pop) neighbor moved and quit giving us free tickets. Scott used to do 'Instant Sheakspeare', where He would be Shakespeare and get stuck on a line and ask the audience for a word and the actors on stage would try to rhyme the word and have it make sense in the scene. It was great fun. The Flaming Idiots used to preform there too. They left and went to Broadway for a few years. They were jugglers and comedy. Lots of fun.

   We went with Nancy and Amanda on a Saturday. We wandered around looking through shops and eating overly expensive and poorly tasting food. The Girls found a sprinkler and ran around under it until they were soaked. We started watching a show with three young girls full of tired jokes and double ententes. I left and when I came back everyone else ad moved on. The girls wanted to try knife throwing or axe throwing. We let them try the strong man thing where you hit a hammer and try to ring a bell and if you don't there is several unflattering thing said about you strength. We watched the Myrtle and Delores washing wenches. It was a show that hoped to make you laugh and feel foolish if you volunteered to help them. It succeeded at both. They were both dresses up as low class washer women with teeth blacked out and no class. They had one man put on and over sized pair of underwear and climb up on a table in the near by bar area and declare his love for one of the women.
   We finished the day with the girls trying to pull King Arthur's sword out of the stone.

CRANBERRY INN
We went to the Beach for three days or parts of three days. We left on a Monday and checked into the Cranberry Inn around three or so and went down to the beach.For about three hours the girls were in a rough surf having a blast. Everyone once in a while one or the other would say they had sand in their bathing suit and then they would tell me where. I didn't really need to know that information. I told them how to get sand out of the top of their suit by letting the waves wash the sand out.
We ate dinner that night at Olive Garden.
   The next day we were at the beach bright and early 10:30 after a nice breakfast at Bobbers. I let my wife spray sunscreen on me and spent the day under the umbrella watching the girls try out their new boogie boards. Once they got the hang of them they had a great time.

   We ate dinner on the boardwalk. The girls got twenty dollars each worth of tickets to ride the rides. They are daredevils and nothing scares them. They had lots of fun. When the tickets ran out Elena wanted to play some games and I got mad at her. I was put out because it seemed that everything, all of it and then some more was not enough for her. Her mother said let her play so we, her and I walked across half the Broadway looking for a game she had seen before. As things began to close a stop was put to her wandering. She decided to play the game where you shoot water at the clown and try to blow up a balloon to win. Her and Nasta played and didn't win. They didn't have enough for both to play again so Elena said Nasta could play which I didn't hear I felt that it was time to go. Teri did hear and kicked in the extra few dollars so both could play. Neither won. At that we headed for home and got there after midnight.
   The final half day we were there we went to Island Beach, which has no boardwalk and only a small concession stand with over priced items of poor quality. At the end of the day they even looked good. So I purchased a smoothie drank some of it and gave the rest to the girls. Nastia had asked for a smoothie at breakfast and we didn't think she would like it so we said no. It turns out she liked it so did Elena and both finished it. I thought it was poor quality.

DUTCHESS COUNTY FAIR
   We went to the Dutchess County fair during the final week of August. We had loads of fun last year and this year I made a point of coming back. We bought Nancy with us this year and followed the same plan as last year except we got there earlier this year. We started with lunch then we let the girls go on rides and we then went through some exhibits of knitting and photo and baking. We then went over to the Cow barn where the girls got to pet cows and advoid cow pies. They petted Sheep, Lambs and other barn yard creatures. They were disappointed again that they could not pet the horses, they bit. We ate somed dinner then went home. It was a two hour trip home and I was tired of driving so Teri did me a favor and drove home. We walked in the door a little after midnight. It was a nice day and a busy month. I good way to end summer. No one is looking foward to school. Things get to busy. Both girls go to Middle School this year. Look out Middle School.