the sunflower festival

yesterday (and today) is the SUNFLOWER FESTIVAL!! this festival is always held over 4th of July weekend in Rutledge, GA. they expected to see 10,000 people this year!

i absolutely love this festival. it's $5 to get in, and it's full of local (and not so local) vendors selling everything from jewelry to window art, games to clothes, and pottery to food. and there's live music. why is it called the sunflower festival? you may ask. because on the property of this festival is a HUGE sunflower field where you can pay $10 and fill a huge vase with them AND you get to cut your own flowers. Some of these sunflowers were taller than me and bigger than my head!

this summer my parents came to enjoy the festival!! we wandered around together looking at all the different vendors (and buying stuff). i got some awesome food mixes, one for salsa, this white mustard sauce, and a creme brulee pie filling. yum. also at the festival every year they have a featured artist! this year it was elizabeth, who does the ceramics activity at camp! it was so cool to see her real stuff and her metalworking.

but what really made the sunflower festival special for me this year is that the CeeTLes were asked to play in the kids section! and Morgan Sheperd joined us on bass!! (he was one of the founding member of the CeeTLes with me two years ago). we did two sets, one at 10 and one at 3. it was definitely a different setting than normal, but it was still fun!! the stage they gave us was long and skinny. luckily jamie's drum set was mini because otherwise it would not have fit up there! all the instruments were on stage and our two singers were standing on hay bales in front. haha. despite some MAJOR technical difficulties in the morning set, my parents really enjoyed it. for the very last song we did 'brown eyed girl' and i got to sing (!), Jamie played drums, and Grace played guitar. it was awesome to change it up like that!! also at our stage we had some friendly faces come see us! one of my old counselors, SIssy, came with her family, one of my friends who was a counselor this year, a former camper, and a counselor from last week all came to check out the festival and see us!

thanks to all of the family members who came out to support us, and also to all the friends from partner groups who came out. it was awesome to see all of you!!

today we have 2 camps coming in. happy 4th of july!!