Ahoy! Pirate Festival

Yesterday we headed out to Grantville, on the way to Philip Island (and just over an hour from here) for their annual Pirate Festival. They have a pirate-themed mini golf all year around and a native animal park. For the day, they had all sorts of activities and games, not to mention lots of people dressed up all pirate-like!

Sienna won the 'Best Dressed Pirate Wench' trophy for the 6-9 year age group. She did look very cute and pretty, and it probably didn't hurt that she was the smallest in the category ;) She also got to go on stage later on to help hold the big snake they had on display.

This was a rather more gross version of Bobbin for apples, with actual pieces of raw squid skewered into the apples! Motivated by a chocolate gold coin reward, both Sienna and Ash grabbed an apple with their teeth.

The face painting was a little bit challenging. First Ash just found it really difficult to communicate what he wanted, a simple design he'd chosen out of the example book, and I had to tell that face painting artist that he had autism just so she would stop talking for a minute and let Ash focus, lol. I don't often feel the need to mention autism to strangers, but apparently face painting is a bit fraught with emotion and communication difficulties! Ash was happy about it, he just needed a moment of reassurance to put the words together.

Sienna went to the other face-painter and asked for the dragon face, it was a design she had also chosen out of the example book. What we didn't realise is that this second face painter didn't paint from the example book, and her idea of a dragon face was quite different from the example. She was a talented painter, but added some sort of horns and fangs, as well as covering Sienna's entire face instead of just around the eyes. When she showed Sienna in the mirror, Sienna got really upset, so I left Ash to finish up on his own and went to see what was happening. Again, I had to say that Sienna has aspergers just to get the lady to stop talking for a minute, the painter kept saying that she didn't know there was a book, all painters are different and that most kids realise that all painters are different, that kids should know that. Um, ok, so it was a little like reassuring two children, really, since the painter was all offended. It was a misunderstanding, I explained that Sienna was expecting the picture she'd seen, we had no way of knowing that the book we were handed was only for one of the painters (or, for that matter, which painter). I explained to Sienna that the lady didn't realise, that the colours looked fabulous, but pulled her away repeating that we have baby wipes and that I will fix it for her, which understandably didn't impress the painter. Phew! Anyway, I wiped off the fangs and horns areas, and limited the green dragon paint to around the eyes like a mask, convinced Sienna that she looked like a beautiful lizard and we moved on to the animal park area with everyone in a good mood.

Cedar loved the kangaroos, it was so funny. He just kept running around saying "big rabbits!" and peering into their faces. He has seen kangaroos before but not up close and tame like these. The kids all had fun feeding them. We also checked out the koalas, dingos, wombats, tasmanian devils, peacocks and some other birds, an alpaca, a goat and a donkey. It was a nice relaxed end to a busy day.