Paul and I bid on a basket at our school auction last spring and it came with family passes to BOOtanica. Having never been before (I feel like I've mentioned my loathe of crowded crowds of strangers somewhere . . . ) we really did not know what to expect. The event was most of the day last Saturday and we thought heading down from 1-3 would be great - perhaps we could hit the naptime lull and have the place to ourselves. Ha . . . ha ha . . . .ha . . . ha.
When we got there it was madness. Madness, I tell you, madness! We had to park way down the street, and when we got inside I mentioned to a volunteer that half of Wichita must have turned out. "It's not too bad right now, actually, " she said casually. "We generally have 3 or 4 thousand turn out." I almost quit right then and there - 23 steps inside and my stomach had already dropped. I knew we were about to enter crowded crowds of strangers. yuck.
The girls so desperatley wanted to take off running but this would have been impossible. At best we were doing a slow mosey through the throngs of strangers wearing costumes. Most of the costume wearers were either adults or teenagers. Weird.
We managed to do a few fun things before I was nearly having a panic attack from the sheer amount of stranger-ness. Have I mentioned I don't like crowds . . . or chaos? I'm a teacher, people. Order is my life.
The girls got to make their own masks and loved listening to the singers. They played for a little while in the children's garden and we absolutely bypassed candy stations (#peanutallergyproblems). I think we stayed about a little over an hour. The girls loved it, Paul was fine with it, I needed to sit in a quiet, sterile room for 20 minutes to pull it back together.
I never can resist taking pictures in front of this fountain; it's where Paul proposed to me a long, long time ago.
The girls loved listening to the choral singers. They actually got to go up and help with a song, too!
I'm fully aware that the masks are creepy.
