The music and the love

We just spent Friday to Monday at the Corinbank festival. It was a great experience again.

At night Ella got pulled around in her new wagon by me or some of our friends. The first night she'd found a tacky gold tiara in the car and was sitting in the wagon with it on her head, under her little doonah, holding up her fairy Dora wand light. The first person who talked to her said: "Hail queen!" We got lots of smiles and lots of comments walking around with our mobile bed/trolley. And eventually Ella would curl up in it and fall asleep and would not stir as I transferred her to our tent when I was ready to go to bed.

During the day we tried to participate in some of the great creative camp activities, though missed most of them because of getting up late, being disorganised, getting distracted and not having a watch. We did make two bead dragonflies, which was a great activity and the results looked very nice. Though we ended up losing the first one we made.

For the rest of the time, I enjoyed the music and the company, while Ella wandered around, feeling safe surrounded by so many aunties and uncles. Sometimes it seemed like half of the people there knew her! She went to buy her own cups of chai plus cookie. She also managed to talk me into giving her money to buy crystals (which we lost) and some devil sticks (well, she managed to talk her dad into buyinig her those because I'd run out of money by then).

She enjoyed the circus too and she was very fond of the whale helicopter (this really needs a photo, but I didn't take any!).

She was quite scared of the people dressed up as animals in the heavy petting zoo. One night - when I was trying to convince her that the 'animals' wandering around were not trying to scare kids - she asked:

Ella - Are they trying to give kids cigarettes?
( think she might have seen one of them give a cigarette to a friend?)
Me - No, kids are not allowed to smoke cigarettes.
Then the animal in question moved towards us a bit and Ella dissapeared behind me.
Ella - [semi-crying voice] I don't want him to give me cigarettes!

She got to go on stage with her dad for the closing ceremony. I will post that video soonish. I still cannot believe that I now have footage of her picking her nose on a stage in front of hundreds of people! Ha! (And this was the day after I'd tried a different method of getting her to kick this habit by saying: "You can only pick your nose when noone can see you." I don't think that worked...)

I had to let her skip school on Monday, partially because 'someone' had thought it a bright idea to give her a cup of melted chocolate at 9pm on Saturday (thanks Katherine!), partially because it was always going to be a tiring weekend for both of us and I didn't feel like going to bed at 8pm on Sunday night myself.

Ella was sad to leave. I'm sure she'll have happy memories of this year's festival and we're looking forward to the next one.

When her godmother asked her on Sunday night what she had liked best about the festival, her immediate - and in no way prompted - reply was: "The music and the love". They should use that as their slogan next year!