Ribfest

It's that time of year again where the streets of Naperville become crowded and you can hear loud music thumping from the festival close by. We live about a 10 minute walk from Knoch park, which is where they hold Naperville Ribfest. Last year we went without Anabelle and listened to Sammy Hagar. This year we decided to take Anabelle with us for her first taste of Ribfest. In order to skip the long lines to get in, we remembered to pre-pay for our tickets at Jewel-Osco earlier this week. By doing this you also get a $3 discount, Anabelle gets in for free because she's so cute. Ok, really all kids under 11 are free.

Today was supposed to be really hot, with highs in the upper 90s, but it ended up not being too hot of a day. Anabelle and I waited for John to get home from work and finish mowing the lawn, and then we were off. By getting there around 5:30 we managed to beat a little bit of the crowd-but not much, it was still pretty packed. We got in and headed for a shady area, and low and behold we found a great spot to spread out our blanket and chairs, we were surprised to find such a great spot. After that we went to the food lines. They weren't too bad yet, we decided to divide and conquer. John and Anabelle waited in the rib line while I went and grabbed 2 blue raspberry lemonades and a bucket-o-cheese fries. That's right, a bucket! I know what you're thinking *Awesome!* and you would be right. Making my way back to John and Anabelle they were just about done, all in all we only spent about 10 minutes waiting in line-not bad for Ribfest. We meandered through the crowd and made our way back to our blanket and chairs and settled in to eat. Anabelle was a definite fan, eating more cheese fries than anything else. After eating we hung out for a bit, enjoying the beautiful weather and music. Anabelle continued to munch on fries, while breaking into spontaneous dance parties. She stayed entertained by climbing all over and in and out of one of the chairs we brought. John and I came up with entercontained, a new word for when your child is entertained and contained in an object. After awhile Anabelle started getting restless and we were ready to go, so we packed it all up and walked home. We were both pleasantly surprised with how smoothly everything went and that is was enjoyable. You never know when you bring a toddler to an event like this. I was able to snap some cute pics, of course!