Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival

On Saturday, the kids and I met up with three other homeschool moms and their kids at the Renaissance Festival in Pittsburgh (just over an hour's drive from our farm). We went to the festival a couple years ago, but were unable to go last year because the owners of the property sold it. The new owners have kept it pretty much the same, but better in many ways. It seemed like everything was laid out better and there were more shows to see.

Some of the activities we did included:

• shooting bows and arrows at hay bales and a couple of sorry-looking, arrow-infested foam deer
• shooting ping pong balls with faux crossbows at holes made in a sheet of particle board (I don't remember what the target was supposed to be)
• the strong man mallet game (you know, where you hit the target with a mallet to make the bell ding at the top)
• throwing leather balls at milk jugs
• riding several human-powered rides (see pictures below)
• watching jousting event
• visiting the many arts and crafts stalls
• watching a glass blowing demonstration
• getting to see a dragon egg hatch
• a really good magician act which ended with him swallowing a long balloon and then popping it, much to the delight of the kids. They talked about how he did that long after the show ended
• a really funny pair of comedians called Puke & Snot (the kids loved the tame, but PG nature of this show)
• carillon bells which could be heard throughout the day wherever you happened to be
• it was also Celtic week so, much to our delight (our being us moms, lol), there were lots of men in kilts running around playing bagpipes
  

The overwhelming favorite activity was the jousting event. The kids loved cheering for the knights and watching them sword fight at the end. It looked real enough that Dylan asked me (with a big grin on his face, I might add) if the guy really died at the end. He knew deep inside that it was all an act, but it was such a good show he swore the guy really did get hit in the eye with a dagger. Many of the kids even said they saw an eye pop out, but this was just their wonderfully active imaginations kicking in.

Glass blowing demonstration

One of the human-powered rides

This was Sydney's favorite ride because of all the spinning (that's her...blondie on the left)

Dylan testing his strength

Sir Tucker