The girls and I woke up today with no plans. I did, what is becoming, my usual Saturday morning check of the atlantaparent.com for fun things to do. I was thrilled to find a free "Family Festival" going on at the Galleria. Just the children's activities alone sounded great. The bonus was that there was a kids run at 11:00. Morgan was completely psyched and couldn't wait for her first race.
We got there early and registered. We still had about an hour before the run and so we checked out the sponsor booths and games that were set up. Morgan had a blast and basically had the place to herself since we were early. There were inflatables, mini golf, carnival type games with prizes, and a fire truck. Each booth had some sort of free giveaway and one even had free ice cream!
Around 10:45 we headed to the start line. Audrey was set in the stroller and Morgan was listening intently to the announcer. She was having a hard time waiting and kept asking, "When are we going to go?" She even "practiced" by moving her arms back and forth as you would if you were running. We were in the 4 and under group and had I known that she wanted to be closer to the front, we would have moved. However, we were back a little and there was that lag that happens in a race when everyone starts to get moving. It was made worse because I had the jogging stroller. Morgan actually said she wanted to win. I encouraged her to run as fast as she wanted and told her I would catch up to her and not to worry. I am still not completely sure what happened for her, but in the 7 minutes and 13 seconds it took to finish, she stopped twice for me to hold her while she cried. From talking to her about it this evening, I think that she was pulled in two directions. On one hand she wanted to run ahead and on the other, she wanted to run next to me. The whole situation just seemed to overwhelm her a little. Despite the tears, she still wants to run another race sometime. Next time, though, she wants Audrey to stay with someone so we can run together:)
After crossing the finish line, we went to get her shirt. She was so proud that she changed into it immediately. I took some pictures of her and then we were off for more games. She got to climb a rock wall which is something she has wanted to do for a long time. And then right before we were about to head out...we saw them...horses! She was beside herself. She stood in line twice and probably would have continued to do so had I not been so hungry. We left to get lunch after a wonderful day together and are actually thinking about going back to the festival tomorrow.
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