E.L. Folk Festival Weekend

Yesterday started the Great Lakes Folk Festival here in East Lansing. The festival runs from Friday evening through Sunday evening. It started at 6pm on Friday and it was looking iffy with the weather and rain was on it's way. Our ol' trusty meteorologist, Andy Provenzano here in Lansing was broadcasting from the festival and said the rain would hold off until late in the night. We debated about going, but with that in mind we decided to give it a shot. Em & I were planning to meet Greg and Evan downtown E.L. because Evan went to work with Greg Friday afternoon. It's been awhile since Ev had been to work and we've been working on Ev staying in his bed all night with a sticker reward chart. So once he earned ten stickers he could choose something special to do. His choice after the first ten stickers was go to work with Daddy. So yesterday was the day to redeem the reward. Evan was surely in his glory and loved being at work with his Dad! Here's my worker Evan at one of the fountains downtown.


Now back to the festival. We all met up right about 6pm and the place where we happened to meet was where the news was broadcasting with ol' Andy P. Meteorologists are always right, right folks? NOT! Right when we got there, it started to rain! There were some sprinkles here and there, and since it was early it wasn't too crowded yet so that was good and we were able to dodge under a few tents here and there. Thankfully though the rain didn't turn into anything significant and held off for the remainder of the time we were there. We walked all throughout the festival checking out the bands and food! We debated back and forth what to eat for dinner and then we walked by Harper's (where I went to the bachelorette party) and saw the 1/2 off sign. So our decision was made and we parked it outside Harper's (they had tables set up out front so you could listen to the festival music) and enjoyed our half off dinner. I also was able to enjoy a half off Spartan Wheat beer again too! While we waited for our meal we listened to music and people watched. Well, to our surprise we saw a horse coming down the street! O.k., it wasn't really a horse, but might as well have been. Check out this Great Dane! It was huge! The kids were totally in awe over it, as were we! I don't think I've ever seen a dog this big. If it stood on it's back legs, it would be taller than it's owner here in the black t-shirt!

After our dinner at Harper's we stopped by a couple of the stages and listened to some of the music. The two bands playing at the time were Shotgun Party, a Western Swing band out of Austin, TX and Los Bandits de Michigan, a Tex-Mex band from Kalamazoo. We didn't care for the Shotgun Party as it was obviously all country. The Tex-Mex band wasn't too bad. Surprisingly it was too loud for Evan (The kid who is always making loud noise with his drum and guitar!) at that tent so we didn't stay long.

Shotgun Party

Los Bandits de Michigan

We were going to try to head back today, but as we all know in E. Lansing, it poured for a good part of the day! Seriously readers, it hasn't rained that hard for that long in a very long time! It did clear up later on, but we already had plans to go to dinner with Greg's mom for her birthday. Her birthday is actually tomorrow, (Happy Birthday!) but we celebrated today and went to BD's Mogolian Barbeque. It was really yummy, and they have a bunch of new items. A few of them being ravioli, meatballs, and alfredo sauce. I put them all together and they were absolutely deilcious! Who'd a thunk, putting ravioli on the grill? Not me that's for sure, but I'd definitely get it again it was so good. Take a look!


After dinner we all headed to the Tasty Twist again for dessert. While sitting at the picnic table there my poor little Emmers fell off and hit the back of her head on the cement. She's got a little bump, but thankfully not too bad. That little girl must have a really hard head because she always seems to be bumping it! We had our neighbor Rich check it out when we got home, he's a nurse, and thought it didn't look too bad and to just ice it for awhile. We tried the best we could, but keeping a two year old still with an icepack isn't the easiest task! Just a little FYI about my Emme, August 8th was actually my due date with her two years ago so I always think on this day now that it could've been her birthday! I'll be back tomorrow to share the rest of our weekend. I think we're going to try tomorrow to head back to the festival and hit up the E.L. Farmer's Market again. That is if we can survive the super hot day we're supposed to have.... going into the 90's with a heat index of 105!