A Day at the Ohio Renaissance Festival

...which nearly did not happen, because it was so rainy. However, the troops were rallied with the pep talk that REAL medieval villagers would not have let a rainy day run their festival. Hell, if the sun was out, that's the day that they'd probably stay indoors, blinking in fear at that unfamiliar bright orb raining the unwholesome glow of dragon's fire down upon them.

And so, accompanied with many lectures on the differences between a historically fair medieval representation and what is more accurately referred to as a medievalism, all coming from the mouth of the resident stay-at-home mom who has the Master's Degree in English with an emphasis on Medieval Studies (ahem), we had a fabulous day at the Ohio Renaissance Festival.

There was stage combat, bawdiness included:

(I have also trained in stage combat, as well as fencing the sport, on account of I am a dork.)

Magic:

Fairies:

Dragons:

and pirates, wenches, serfs, barbarians, plenty of royalty, etc. I dressed in my Goodwill Ren Faire dress, while Willow dressed as a wizard and Sydney dressed as a fairy. Willow was often asked to perform various spells for various residents of the village (SERF: Please, Miss Wizard, perform a spell to give me a pot of gold. WILLOW: No, I'm going to turn you into a frog! SERF: AAAAAAAH!), and Sydney was often queried about whether she was a good fairy or a bad one. Matt was boring in his T-shirt and shorts, so we improved him:

There were tons of shows going on all the time and a million other things to do that were absolutely free (not least of which was petting the jousting horses)--

--but I hadn't realized that there would also be tons of really fun rides and other activities (throwing tomatoes at the wretch, anyone?) that cost money, and so it really wasn't in the infernal budget. We permitted each girl to choose ONE activity, therefore, out of all the possibilities. Willow chose a life-sized walk-through maze, Sydney was beside herself at her inability to choose between the maze, riding the jousting horse, riding the camel, going on the carousel, throwing tomatoes at the wretch, trying out the climbing wall, etc., but then finally settled on possibly the wildest ride in the village. It looked so impressive that Willow spent her own money to ride along:

Barf, right? The girls loved it, though, and I think it was their favorite thing at the fair, along with the moderately-priced handmade wooden sword and shield set that I bought for each of them. Matt's favorite thing was the smoked turkey leg, hands down (also barf), and I think that I was the fondest of this juggler:

Dorky dreams do come true: