Notes from the Treehouse: Arts Festival & Pride Fest 2011

We don't venture Downtown with the children too often, but this weekend, we actually went twice! Yesterday, we headed to the Arts Festival where we partook in some of the action for the kids ... hoolahoops, Vivian and I made a wind thingamajing out of "trash" (Grosspapa would've appreciated that place!) and then made artwork with paint at the Childrens' Museum. Fun!

Today, we got together with Jenny, Joel and Rowan and headed down to the annual Pride fest. We marched in the parade with many other members of our (and other) UU churches. We enjoyed the numerous colorful characters, were pleasantly suprised at some of the corporate sponsors (Highmark, Macy's) and then went to have Greek food for lunch before checking out a few more of the attractions for the children and heading home again exhausted!

No pictures from the Arts festival, but a bunch from today. Looking at the photos to edit them, I'm shocked at how little (not at all) Vivian noticed the "dress-up" going on all around us. In fact, I just looked at one picture with her with lots of colorful characters in the foreground and she exlaimed "There's Joel!". I had to look twice to notice him somewhere in the background :)

* Updated to add that - as soon as I typed the paragraph above - Vivian took a look at the next photo and proclaimed "I'm her". I didn't have the heart to tell her it was a he, not a she ;)

Standing on the Side of Love - the slogan on the T-shirts

Vivian can wear her shirt for years to come!

Annelee didn't want to feel left out and made her own shirt

Oooops ... you are not allowed to climb these. Snapped the pic first, anyways. After all, how much more "Pittsburgh" can you get than a Heinz-Dinosaur? :)

The banner of the local UU churches

This guy tried to preach our certain damnation to us (notice the bible in his hand, too), but was sort of swallowed up by the fun and good times everyone was having