Treasure

When I was little, I always imagined finding treasure...undiscovered Egyptian tombs filled with gold, shipwrecks carrying crates of diamonds from Africa, buried pirates booty with untold riches and jewels. Nothing was too grand for my imagination. In fact, for years and years I wanted to be an archaeologist. I mean, you get to travel the world while playing in dirt from sun up to sun down. I cannot fathom why more children do not dream of this career path. As part of Pensacola's 5 Flags Fiesta celebration, Bayview park hosted a free treasure hunt this weekend for those lucky enough to be 10 and under. I'm not gonna lie, I did consider tossing on some play clothes and donning pig tails in hopes of passing under the radar...but my maturity won out and I settled for responsible parent instead ::sigh::

So Saturday morning me, the girls & Ava-Relli loaded up to see what treasure we could round up. John and Gavin opted to spend Saturday at the ball fields (which sounds just awful) where John was playing in a softball tournament...so they missed out on all the fun.  The festival was fantastic...and it was all FREE!!! Though the treasure hunt was the highlight, they also had FREE food, drinks, face painting, games, Jams for the tiny dancer in all of us, and more sidewalk chalk and sidewalk than you can imagine. Not to mention the playground at Bayview is pretty impressive...it even has a mister. We spend a lot of time in that mister...because it was HOT! I'm talking like melt you shoes to the asphalt hot. Amazingly enough no child complained of famine or exaggerated thirst...I think the were distracted by the free CANDY!

They had the treasure hunt divided up by age group to keep it fair. Ava's group just had to run into this field of coins and pick up 5...more like a robbery than a treasure hunt but...whatever, it worked for her. The older girls had to go to 5 different stations and answer a riddle in order to receive their coins. The flag's weren't exactly "hidden" but in the chaos of easily 300 children, it did make them hard to find. They then traded their coins in for goodie bags...identically matching goodie bags (thank you Jesus!). 

We finished the day off with a quick trip to pick some blueberries. We didn't have much luck, leaving with just over 1 pound of berries. BUT had their been a contest for most awesome make up while picking blueberries...we would have TOTALLY won.

She was totally psyched because a stranger told her she looked like Jasmine. That's the ultimate compliment for a 7 year old girl ..