Harrisonburg Parklet Project and Crazy Hat/Hair Day

Today was Crazy Hat and Hair Day at EMES.  The girls attend a wonderful school where once a month they have a special theme day.  This is something the kids always look forward to.  Each child gets to participate in a "committee" to plan one of the days throughout the year.  It's a great way to develop leadership skills in the students and build community in the school.  Hannah wore her circus hat, and Sophie wore one pigtail and one braid.  She's so crazy!!

Today was also First Fridays in downtown Harrisonburg.  We began with a trip to the children's museum where EMES was sponsoring some special activities.  The girls saw several friends from school there, and Sophie built a worm home in a bottle.

Then we walked around downtown to see the mini-parks that various artists had installed in 13 different parking spaces.  This Harrisonburg Parklet Project is quite a unique idea that Charles played a large part in organizing.  We weren't sure what to expect, but there turned out to be quite a few parklets that had activities for kids to do, and we had a great time.  We had planned to grab some dinner when we got done, but it took longer than we thought to visit all the parklets (because of the activities offered) and the restaurants all had long waits till we were through.  We came home for a quick dinner and put two tired girls to bed.

Various parklets

Parklet with books and places to sit and read

Cozy parklet where the girls drew the places they like to play

Face-painting in the art fraternity's parklet. Hannah got a tiger and Sophie a purple unicorn.

A couple of parklets with places for kids to play

The girls as lions (while on our way to a parklet)

My favorite was Sophie's contribution to the Downtown Renaissance's parklet.  They installed a huge blackboard and asked people to write on it what they like about Harrisonburg or what they think Harrisonburg needs.  Here's what Sophie wrote:

It says "poop coon" with her name signed proudly underneath.  What she meant was "popcorn," so we changed it after snapping this picture.  Harrisonburg definitely is better off with some popcorn rather than poop coon.