Carnivals, Fall festivals, and other great events

This last weekend was the big kick off to fall here in New Jersey (and everywhere else for that matter). There were so many activities going on. We finally decided to head on over to A Taste of Medford. It was a festival with lots of local restaurants and shops displaying there places. We paid a fee to get in and then we could eat or do whatever there was available.

They had carriage rides available. Boston loved it.
There was also a company offering pony rides.

This was just a quarter of the free food we picked up. They had all types of food there, including one (that's right just one) Mexican food place. There was even an italian resturant handing out jars of spaghetti sauce. This set up was from one of the local grocery stores, Shoprite. Boston is getting pretty good with the camera.

Over the past two months we've spent our weekends searching for great activities that this here county has to offer. Here are some of our other findings.

This was a local carnival that St. Joan of Arc's church was putting on.
Boston was told by the carnival man that he made a record of shooting out 5 tiger teeth. Thanks for the help too daddy.
His prize, a water gun. Sweet!
A few weeks ago there was also an annual Medford parade going on (Medford is the city right next to us in Marlton). It was very small. In fact we showed up 10 minutes before it started and there was no one there. Almost exactly at 10am people started showing up. It was crazy. In Mesa parades you have to get there 45 minutes early just to find somewhere to sit. We picked a spot on the side of the road and this nice old man came walking up from the small residential road behind us. He lived just off the lake behind here and had worked for a company similar to where John works. He was really nice and later his daughter showed up too. During the carnival Chris Myers a Lockheed Martin VP came walking down the parade shakin' peoples hands because he's running for US Senate. The old man totally knew him and shook his had, then introduced John to him saying "Hey Chris, this young man works for you." That was pretty cool. There was such a small number a kids where we sat that Boston made out like a bandit with all the candy being thrown around. Boston didn't even know what to do 'cause in Mesa you're lucky to get a couple pieces with all the kids there. When the parade ended they had a carnival at the end. This is a famous Philly Pretzel. They are everywhere. You can get coupons to buy 5 for $3. That's a smokin' deal. This is also a place we found called Kid Junction. It was fun but way over priced for the size of the place. It cost us $20 for both kids to get in! You can see in this picture above that it really isn't that big. Maybe the size of two McDonald's.

This actually was McDonald's. I posted the picture to show the diversity here. The little boy on the far right is Asian. This is a new favorite park of ours, Freedom Park. Boston thought he would try out the sign language board and insisted that I did not help him.

So that's some of the places we've been trying around here. Hopefully there is more to come.