The Renaissance Festival

As a family, we don’t have a lot of traditions. But one we do have is that we go to the Renaissance Festival every year for opening weekend. It was a tradition that started when I was a kid. Opening weekend is always either right before or right after my birthday, so I had many years as a kid where my birthday party was going to RenFest with a couple of my favorite friends. And when we moved back to Colorado 8 years ago, we picked that tradition back up.

Now that we’ve got the kiddos, it makes it even more fun. Because it’s not just about the shopping and the food, but also so totally about the experience for them. They are now old enough that they want to dress up and have their faces painted. They have started looking forward to specific things about the whole affair. And all the dressed up people don’t scare them anymore. Or at least, not as much.

They both wanted to dress up this year, so they donned their capes and The Boy brought his wooden sword and shield (after much begging we yielded to The Girl’s request for a wooden dagger which she promptly tucked into the sash around her pretty dress).

I have such fun memories of the Renaissance Festival from my childhood and I’m grateful that we can help our kids build their own memories. I love that we can take them somewhere that plays to their imaginations without the necessity of flashing lights or the need for quarters or tokens. I love that we can walk through those gates and allow ourselves to become immersed in another time. I love that fully grown adults will search out The Boy to start a sword fight in the middle of the crowd or track down The Girl just to tell her how pretty of a princess she is.

It’s such a nice break from the daily grind. For all of us. There’s no reining in or distracting from play so we can run errands. It’s just a day long escape into fantasy and fun with turkey legs and frozen oranges thrown in for good measure.