8th Annual Lowville Creamcheese Festival

What an awesome free advent to attend.  Every year it gets bigger and better.  This year they are estimating the crowd to have been around 15,000 people.  A few venders were sold out by 3:30pm, even though they brought double food this year in order to make it until 6pm.  

Of course the nation's largest cheesecake was there :)  3500 pieces to be exact

A live band played throughout the entire day.  They were really good too!

They had a TON of activities going on throughout the day.  The variety of "wacky" games used about 600lbs of cream cheese throughout the day.  Here is the list of activities that took place....

"Fill Your Friend's Face", "Cream Cheese Toss", "Cream Cheese Bingo", "Milk the Cow", "Dress Like a Farmer", "Milk Tray Relay", "Mini Tractor Pull", "Pet Contest", "Decorate a Scarecrow Contest", and "Kids Eating Contest".  They all had decent cash prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd places.  We had fun watching :)

 Every year they have a HUGE canvas and the kids can draw, "color", or write their names on it.  

 Once we walked through the vendors, we headed over to the Children's Discovery Park.  This is of course the kids favorite part :)  It's a huge area, that although is packed with kids, is also packed with TONS of inflatable rides, bouncy houses, sports challenges, giant slides, a climbing wall, a mechanical bull, a petting zoo, games, and pony rides.  There are also snacks inside as well.   You pay $5 per child to get in, they get their hand stamped and then everything else inside is free.  This included 3 food tickets per kid.  They could choose from snow cones, cotton candy, and popcorn.  I think Marissa got a bag of popcorn, a snow cone, and cotton candy and Madalyn got two bags of popcorn, and 1 snow cone.  Pretty crazy deal if you ask me!

They both wanted to ride the Paint this year and skip out on the ponies :)  Mommy didn't object at all! She was kinda fidgety while the kids rode her.  There were some dark clouds coming in and I think she thought it was going to storm.  I figured for sure she was going to let loose with one of our girls on her, but she was really good :)

They fed her some hay while her saddle was being fixed.

The girls always want to do this at the fairs and every year I remind them that we can do that for a lot cheaper at the festival!  It's a LONG line, I think we waited for close to an hour, but they love it!

Then they headed over to the FREE playground!  LOL  Doug and I kinda looked at each other and said "Boy aren't you glad we paid $5 for the kids to come and play on a free playground that they can play on anytime?"  LOL  They had fun though and thats all that matters!

Back to the inflatables!  They wanted to test out their strength on this one :)

Waiting in line

Madalyn didn't like that they wouldn't let Marissa go with her on this one.

But she was brave and went!

Here comes Marissa LOL  She was racing the other player on the other side.

She caught up to Madalyn.  Marissa got to slide down this twice.  LOL  She ALMOST made it to the top, lost her grip and down she went.  She made it second try and then there is a slide on the other side.  

Madalyn is stubborn like her Mommy and she made it up first try.  She was NOT letting go!

Round 2!

Can you find Marissa?

Swinging over the "water"

Cutie!

I think the bull riding is still Madalyn's favorite! ( I don't know what happened to Madalyn's second ride though)

The adults got a lot of enjoyment out of watching this one.  Both girls really liked this and went on it twice :)

Daddy told the girls they could get their faces painted.  We kinda wish we would have done this first off, but they got to enjoy them for a while.  They were so proud!  The artists did a great job!

Our new pets :)

Madalyn the puppy...

 Marissa the kitty...