Children's Day at Art Park

Austin seriously has a ton of fun, free events. We haven't actually made it to many of them, but we did go twice this summer to Children's Day at Art Park. I'm a big fan of activities where there is free and convenient parking. This is one of those. You just park at the capitol visitor's center lot and walk two blocks. For this activity, it was fifty cents per kid. Everyone got a balloon, and we sat in a nice shady amphitheater and listened to a concert. First a small group from the Austin Symphony performed. Then there was a children's musician, someone different every week. The stage was in the full sun, so we also had the added pleasure of watching them sweat themselves to death while we kicked back in the shade. 

When the concert was over, we crossed the street and listened to some more music while we did a craft, bought lemonade, and got Annie's face painted.

We also went inside a little house and listened to Bernadette the British storyteller. She was really good! I wish we would have spent more time doing that, but Annie really wanted to wait in the long face-painting line...which was also very cool. And it's Children's Day at Art Park, right? Not Mom's Day at Art Park.

The first time we went, we also visited this book store in Austin that I'd heard a lot about called Book People. We ate our lunch outside of it at a nice, shaded picnic table. Texans are serious about and committed to shade. In some ways, this makes the heat more bearable here than it was in Utah where there aren't many canopy trees. 

The store was very cool. I think I'd like to live there. Since we were in Austin, there was an unusually large gay/lesbian section and feminist section which included this gem:

 It was also enlightening to glance at all of the liberal, sketchy, and strange advertisements on a board outside of the bathrooms. We spent the bulk of our time in the children's section which was magical with awesome displays, all of our favorite books, and cool toys and trinkets. I'll have to go back and actually spend some money some time.