Tex RenFest 2011

This past weekend we went to the Texas Renaissance Festival north of Houston.  It is always so entertaining seeing all the costumes. The group I went with this year decided to dress up.  A couple of us went as fairies, there was a forest nymph and three Star Trekkers.

This guy's wings opened occasionally.  He was very gargoyly...

Aiden stared at these giant boat swings forever.  Linsey and Zach took Luke over to go on the swing.  We asked Aiden if he wanted to ride the swings and he said yes.  Since I'm fighting some serious "morning" sickness this pregnancy, the last thing I wanted to do was rock back and forth in a giant swing.  So Daddy and Grandma took him for a ride.  He seemed really into it, right up until the point when they climbed on board.

He cried like that the ENTIRE time.  They didn't stay on as long as they could have, but it was probably a good five minutes of swinging fun.  Travis was giving me the stare down the entire time for putting him through that.  HA.

After the swings we saw Hagrid!  Apparently Luke watches Harry Potter with Zach and his favorite character is Hagrid.  Luke spotted him before any of us did and ran up to give his knees a hug before we even knew what was going on.  Luke was quite the hugger that day.  I'm pretty sure he hugged every costumed person there.

A few of the girls from work:

Aiden has never been big on dancing.  All of our friends' kids love to dance, but Aiden has always refused to  dance at all.  A couple months ago we put him in a dance class once a week at his daycare.  He has recently started dancing all on his own and I think it is adorable.  Luke and him started dancing as we passed a Renaissance band.  Aiden sticks his elbows out and pivots at the hips.  It looks something like this:

Michelle the Forest Nymph

I'm pretty bummed that you can't see how detailed her face paint was.  It was impressive!

At one point we stopped to look at the elephants.  Every time one stopped to load people, she would sniff us with her trunk.  When Luke came over, the trunk startled him and he accidentally dropped his pacifier inside the enclosure.  The elephant quickly grabbed it up, tossed it over in her trunk, then ate it.  The whole time I was trying to get someone's attention, but none of the keepers would look over at us.  When one finally did come over, he was pissed thinking we had fed the elephant the pacifier.  Who would do that?  Luke kept saying, "Give it back!  Give it back!"  I have a feeling he might have elephant issues from here on out.

Steampunkers:

The knight and his father

The semi-pirate and his father