Annual Pan American Festival

Every year ever since was a small child growing up in the Long Beach/Lakewood area ..Mayfair park in Lakewood always have during Mother's day weekend a Pan American festival. Basically it is all the local schools and clubs setting up booths and doing performances for the community. They always have a ton of Craft booths from local artists and a carnival. I remember throughout the years going with my parents as a small child to going there as a teenager with my friends to now going there with my own kids. It is amazing how time flies.
It was early Saturday morning and man was I broke this weekend. (May is always a bad time for us). However you don't need any money to get some exercise so like I said ..early Saturday morning my mom came over and said Let's go walk to Mayfair park and check out the crafts..so I shook off my slight hangover from Toni's treat to Happy Hour after work on Friday ..jumped in the shower and was getting ready to leave. Since I had no Money I was going to leave the kids at home so I would not disappoint them by letting them know I could not afford snacks and rides for them..Ava looked out the window sadly at my mom and I walking away so I turned around and put her in the jogger and took her with us while Gabe and Parker played computer games all morning..besides I am sure she could care less about the rides...they are quite intimidating after all.

As soon as we got closer to the Park you could smell all the food in the air and hear the screams in the background from the carnival rides. After looking at the crafts we walked over to look at the carnival rides. I love this Helter Skelter Slide (always think of the beginning of the Beatles Song)..when I was little this thing was like the biggest beast of a slide I have EVER SEEN and was terrified to ever go on it!

I really Hate carnival rides...they creep me out ...and this carnival seemed to have Every Spinning, vomit producing ,rickety carnival ride you could think of. I am sure if I brought Parker the only rides he would have wanted to go on would be the Helter Skelter and the Fun house...maybe the Ferris wheel.

My mom gave me a few bucks and we let Ava play a game where every kid is a winner..it is a fishing game..she won a small prize and choose the little green frog of course (she LOVES Frogs) afterwards we stopped at a Candy Apple booth and bought one for Parker and myself and a couple Popsicles and walked back home. It was a nice time. Hopefully next year I will have more money to spend on some of the beautiful crafts I saw for sale.