Let’s Go Fly a Kite

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s, um, a whole sky full of kites!

This many kites at any one time can only mean one thing…it was time for the 81st Annual Zilker Kite Festival in Austin, Texas. Residents of the greatest city on Earth look forward to the festival all winter long, as it’s our first sign that Spring has arrived.

We had never before visited the Festival, but we decided that this was the perfect year to start a new family tradition. We grabbed the super cool airplane kite that Zack received for his birthday and headed down to Zilker Park.

When we arrived at the Festival, we were in awe at some of the very cool kites. My favorite was this pirate ship.

And this was the coolest kite EVER (I have no idea who this dude is, but he looks kinda cool in my photo).

Look, Mom! Twins!

We had a great time checking out all the kites. There were even “professional” kite handlers there who were doing kite tricks and even waging combat with Japanese Fighting Kites. Who knew there was even such a thing as that? Not me (but apparently Tom knew…’cause he knows EVERYTHING. LOL)

Once Zack visited the Port-a-Potty half a dozen times, we decided that we were ready to join in the fun. Tom and Zack put the airplane kite together.

We should have known that when you have to read the directions to assemble the kite, there’s going to be nothing but trouble afterward.

Tom tried to fly the kite.

And tried.

And tried.

And gave up.

So, I tried.

And tried.

And, I gave up, too. Zack decided he wanted to try it on his own.

And we all know how that ended, right?

Being as that we didn’t see any other airplane kites in the air, we decided that they were too hard to fly. You know, the kite was the problem, not the pilots. Clearly.

Luckily, they were selling kites at the park, so Tom bought us a new one.

Again, Tom tried.

But this time, he had success!

Woo Hoo!

Look at our kite way up there with the big boys!

After all of that hard work, we were sunburned, exhausted, and ready to go home. We had to ride shuttle buses from a Park-and-Ride to get to the park, but since we were leaving the Festival so early (you don’t get to stay anywhere very long when you have a 3 year old!), we figured there wouldn’t be a long line to get back on the buses.

We were wrong. At least I took the standing in line opportunity to scavenge the park for some more Spanish Moss to use around the house, ’cause yeah, I’m totally that person…and the other people in line thought I was insane.

Oh, well. Sometimes you just have to throw your inhibitions (and a couple of kites) to the wind and do what makes you happy.

This is just one way I’ve lived a Beautiful Life with my family this week. Chec
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