Once Upon A Time...

... my sweet mother and I dragged my dad to the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival. My favorite brother-in-law was kind enough to watch my Utah niblets so that my darling sister could come too.

This was my dad's first time at the festival, my mother's second time around, and my third visit. Jenny, who worked for the library that sponsors it during her pre-children-life, has been to Timpfest several times as a volunteer and as a spectator.

The festival is held in Mt. Timpanogos park every Labor Day Weekend. The festival folks set up huge tents for story telling, medium sized tents for shopping, and small tents for fantastic food vendors. We went on Friday, and everything about that day was perfect. We were able to hear five of the thirteen featured tellers, and two youth tellers. They were all amazing.

I was most excited about hearing my favorite storyteller/professional liar. That's him in the red hat. I heard him tell the first year I came, and then proceeded to buy up as many of his CD's as possible. When I found out that he was going to be featured again this year, I made sure that our day was planned so that we could see him as much as possible. And see him we did! We went to his morning and afternoon performances,.

And I may have stalked him a little bit during the rest of the day.

But just a little.

I came back from the festival with a ton of great stuff... CD's, a DVD, story-writing stuff, a shirt, a bag, an engraved rock, and a few other things. I think I spent enough to qualify as one of the donors for next year's festival.

One of my most favorite purchases was also my most random. I bought myself a rat puppet...wait a minute ...

Let's try that again.

I bought myself a rat puppet.... No....

Hold on.

I bought myself a rat puppet...

Never mind. I'm sure they will let me visit my rat on school holidays.

The rest of the weekend was pretty fun too.

The baby listened to his first BYU football game with Pa.

And Ruby and I went hat shopping. But all too soon it was time to go home, which was easier said than done.

The nibets did their darnedest to thwart our efforts to leave. I'm sure the thought of saying goodbye to their Darling Mindy and beloved Pa and Dam-ma was quite upsetting for them. They said they would miss us soooo much.

Of course, by "us", they meant the rat puppet. But I think they will miss those of us without whiskers too. I think...

For more info on the festival, check out the website by clicking HERE. And if you want to hear or see any amazing stories by my favorite teller, or any of the other tellers I love, feel free to drop on by. Just be prepared to grade some papers while you listen. Its amazing how fast they stack up when I am gone for a day...