Crawfish festival

On Saturday, the family went to the Texas Crawfish Festival. We had a pretty good time, though I ended up feeling like I had overpaid. This primarily stems from the fact that you have to pay for parking and entrance fees for what amounts to the opportunity to spend more money. Those in the know: think Art City Days carnival where you have to pay to get in.

The kids had fun riding the rides for the most part. J and S jumped on one of those trampoline-harness things and rode a couple of other rides. L was most excited about the kiddie roller coaster, but that didn't go as well. R seemed nervous and was happy to get out when the ride was done, but L started screaming on the first drop and pretty much escalated her screaming with each lap for the rest of the ride. She rode a similar ride last year at Art City Days, so I'm not sure why she was so scared this time.

The music was...okay. The rock bands weren't that great, or we weren't in the mood, and we don't much like country music, but we heard a pretty good set on the zydeco stage. Zydeco is not music I'd want to listen to every days, but it is pretty fun to listen to live for a little while. Our favorite song was a catchy tune where the only lyrics were repetitions of, "I want my money. You stole my money. Bring back my money." Only, I swear it sounded like he was saying monkey instead of money, so we all had a good laugh at that.

The crawfish was good. The older kids ate a few and J seemed to like it quite a bit. L and R tasted it but couldn't get past the weirdness of it. I liked it and thought it tasted quite a bit like lobster. Other food of the day included a funnel cake, lemonade, beef jerky, and deep fried: alligator (tasted okay but very tough), Snickers bar (good as a novelty but surely against the Word of Wisdom), and Nutter Butter cookies (same).

Yesterday, Hollie made buckwheat pancakes in a futile attempt, in her words, "to scrub out our insides."

Perhaps the most fun part of the day was a presentation by a guy who has an alligator theme park and TV show called Gator 911. He had a couple of caymans and a 6 month-old American crocodile, which is endangered, and which S got to hold as an audience volunteer. J also got to volunteer as one of several people to help hold a ~15-foot albino Burmese python. It was a big, beautiful snake.

I ended the evening by taking J to see Avatar. It was well-made and well-enough acted, but I didn't particularly care for the plot. It was too predictable and anti-corporate. J declared it the best movie he's ever seen, but I thought it was a bit too coarse for him.

On the ride to the theater, I tried to follow Elder Ballard's advice from last general conference and ask Joseph how he was doing. I asked him if he said his prayers each night, and he dutifully responded, "Yes, I pray every night except for the days when I don't have anything to repent of!" Setting aside the question of whether he has sinless days--his sisters would surely argue not--I talked to him for a few minutes about different purposes of prayer and encouraged him to pray each day and to occasionally offer a prayer with nothing but thanks.