Happy Campers @The Orange Blossom Jamboree

Our family loves Music Festivals.
Camping in itself is fun, add great music, good people and good vibes....what more could you ask for?
4 years ago the dynamic of our Music Festivals changed when we brought our first son to the Wanee at 9 months.  This past year was the first year we missed that particular festival.  Although we were kinda bummed, it was a good decision.  However fantastically awesome, it was getting too big.  Maybe when the kids are bigger we can revisit the idea of going again, but for now we have found many smaller family friendly festivals to replace it. 

The Orange Blossom Jamboree has become of our favorite.  It's only 3 years old, so it's still on the smaller side, which is perfect for the kids.  The Sertoma Youth Ranch, where it is held, is a beautiful campground, with lots of shade and hot showers.  There is a creek running through the camp area which is awesome and provides hours of entertainment for the youngsters.   Not to mention the terrific bands that play all weekend long.
It was the baby's 1st festival so we were curious to see how the weekend was gonna go.

Since a picture is worth a 1000 words....

Here he is with my friend Carey.  This is pretty much what he looked like all weekend.

This is my favorite photo of the weekend.  Daddy and son headed to the music, which was at the stage in the background.  Also bunches of vendors with food, art and everything in between.

A local artist named Bean Spence kindly decorated the end of the creek with his fun artwork.  He also holds an art class for the kids during all festivals he attends.  Great guy.  Ryder really enjoys him.

This was probably the highlight of the trip.  The infamous rope swing.  Once we set up this bad boy our campsite became the hot spot for the kids.  Which, of course, Ryder loved.  He made lots of friends.

Our neighbors had a birthday party for their son who turned 8.  All the kids were invited, which was great.

Archy the 46 yr old parrot.  Super smart.  He made a lot of friends through out the weekend, too.

Here's the baby meeting Amanda and Lexy for the first time.  She was just so excited to hold him.

On the last night we wanted to see the music, so we brought the baby in the stroller.  We didn't get the smiles, but the next best thing...a sleeping boy.   He was just perfect.

A fire show at night.  Always entertaining.

The Applebutter Express is one of our favorite bands.  We first met them at our campsite at the Wanee 3 years ago when they were just a duo traveling from campfire to campfire.  With his ukelele playing and her amazing voice you knew their talent would get noticed.  They have since added some band members and are playing huge venues, like Bonnaroo!  Congrats guys, you deserve it!

Here's a few links to check out OBJ, The Applebutter Express, some of Bean's artwork and the campground, which is open all year and hosts many music fests throughout the year.

http://www.orangeblossomjamboree.com/bands/applebutter-express

http://beanspenceart.com/index.php/gallery/

http://sertomayouthranch.org/Home.html

I hope you enjoy them all and we hope to see you at OBJ next year!

Just an update....

The Blueberry Festival was this past weekend.
We went everyday!
Like I mentioned before there isn't usually to much happening in our small town, so we really made the best of it.


Friday night there was a parade and then some music and food trucks downtown. 

The infamous Taco Bus. 

People talk about the Taco Bus ALL THE TIME.  We figured we would wait until Saturday to get some.
This was a dumb idea.
No Taco Bus on Saturday.  Duh, it was Cinco de Mayo, why would the Taco Bus be at the Blueberry Festival??  Lesson learned: See Taco Bus, Get food from Taco Bus.


Saturday the festivities started at 10 am.  We met up with some friends and went to check out some of the fun.

This picture of the kids makes me wanna sing, "Hey, Hey we're the Monkeys.."

It was great!  They had about 10 square blocks barricaded off.  The streets were filled with plenty of carnival food and lots of vendors.  There was a kids area with face painting and some other usual suspects.  They had small stages set up every where, just about every block you turned on there was music.  Also very cool,  they had an open container policy for the weekend, which meant we could have a cold beer while we walked around.   We catered to the children, so we spent a lot of time sitting in the shade listening to whatever music drifted our way, while the kids ran around in the grass.  All and all a great time.

Sunday the Hubs and I went back with our family.  As it turned out our 4 year old wanted to stay and play at his cousin's for a bit.  They have a property right off Main St. so we left him behind and headed up with just the stroller.  The baby was a dream and slept the whole time.  We were able to really enjoy ourselves and check out everything without interruption.  We got to watch the street performers, eat blueberry shortcake and even make a few purchases.

My favorite purchase would have to be the honey!

That's right!  Blueberry Honey!
So delicious and super good for you, especially when it's local. This one came from a couple towns over.
Yay!  



It was a great weekend for us and a great weekend for the town.







The baby was an angel.  He did great.  He's mostly a happy baby, but ya never know how they are gonna act when taken out of their element.   But this is what we got to deal with...

...and when he wasn't smiling, he was eating or sleeping.  Perfect!
And not to leave out his older brother, we got several compliments on how good his manners were and how sweet he was.  Makes you feel good that all your hard work pays off.  Especially when they choose to preform well in public, because Lord knows they are not always on their best behavior at home. 

This makes me even more excited for our upcoming camping trip.  It will be the baby's 1st music festival!  Our older son started going when he was 9 months old and he loves them. I'm really pumped that they can share the experience.  Even at such a young age the baby really identifies with his big brother.  He smiles every time he sees him.  And the feeling is totally mutual.  Big brother loves to talk to him and get him laughing.  It's so special to see.


On a side note:
I finally caved and got a new phone.  It's smart.  ;)  And it has a cool camera, which all these pictures were taken with.   It's pretty amazing what technology can do...I didn't even have to plug my phone into anything to upload the pictures.  Just accessed everything through the web.  Wild.  Who would have thought we would have come so far so fast?  Instead of telling our kids, "I walked up hill, both ways, in the snow."  We'll say, "All the phones had wires, hooked into the wall and some even required quarters to make a call."