It Takes a Village....

not to raise a child but to have 2 whole days of awesome fun!! In my last post I shared that Steve and I spent our first day tooling around the quaint town of Mt. View. This was only because the Craft Village closes every Monday to give the craftsmen and women one day off a week. So Tuesday morning we dropped the boys off at camp, visited with the Akins in their camper for a while and then headed off to the village. Now in my mind, although my memory of the village was exciting and magical, I really only expected to run through for a couple of hours, look at all of the crafts, listen to some music, have a homemade fried pie and then be bored and head back to the cabin for an afternoon nap. Only because I was foolish to think that the only reason I like the Ozark Folk Center when I was a kid was because of my 10 year old mind! Really until this point I really only wanted to go back to the Center for the boys! The first thing we did was walk through the gift shop. Now if you are like me, I love gift shops! So I looked around and saw a few items that looked good. We bought of few of these books; Herb growing, Bread Making, What to do When the Power Fails, etc. I love these Storey Country Bulletins. If you have never read one, you should.

Anyway, we walked into the Village and I quickly remembered why I loved it. It has such a calming effect. There are people working everywhere. Busy making, building, gardening but what is missing is the NOISE!! No loud machinery or electronics just the sounds of wood being turned on a lathe, small instruments being tuned before a show, bubbling of water on an open fire while soap is being made, rhythmic pounding of a blacksmiths hammer forging a new tool and all of the stories being told by the crafters in order to draw you into their shops!! Not to mention the amazing smell of fresh meat being smoked in the brick smoke house!! It was fantastic! Steve and I were in heaven!!

Needless to say we spent 7 hours there with no breaks and still wanted to spend more time~ The crafts are amazing and the people are even better!! They all were so friendly and eager to answer any questions you have about there trade. And believe me, we had a lot of questions!! The best part is that although they sell everything they make during the day, there was absolutely no pressure to buy anything. No matter how long you sat and talked to them about their amazing work, they never even hinted that you should buy something. So of course, that makes you want to buy something from everyone!!

So after a day of village fun, we picked the boys up from camp at 4:00 and so that gave them only 1 hour in the village. We thought that might be enough but it definitely was not!! So on Tuesday evening, we were faced with a dilemma. The boys camp was for 3 days with an evening program at the end of the third. We knew that we were not going to be able to stay all day on Wednesday due to the fact that Steve's grandfather had died and Steve needed to be in Colorado on Thursday. We had looked for a flight out of Arkansas to Denver so that the boys and I could stay at the Center but the closest and cheapest flight was out of Oklahoma City on Thursday morning. So our dilemma was thus; send the boys to their last day of camp and leave at noon to be in OKC by 6:00 pm or have them skip the last day of camp and let the boys experience some quality time in the village. When we asked them their preference, instantaneously they voted on the Village. So Wednesday morning we got up and headed over to camp to tell Mrs. Mary and Andrew and Abi that we were sadly going to have to leave earlier than we had originally thought. After collecting all of the boys crafts and goodbyes and hugs from Mrs. Mary. We headed out to the village for another day of fun!!

We spent a lot of time in this shop. The potters, John Perry and Judi Munn are a married couple who work together in creating the most beautiful pottery I have ever seen! Check out their website. We bought some of the red and black pottery! It's amazing. Steve and I are going back to the Center in March so Steve can take a week long class with John!

Isaac loves to work with this hands. Especially knitting and sewing. Ms. Dana spent a good hour explaining the art of weaving on a 4 harness loom. She allowed him to work a bit on a shawl too!

The boys in the Pioneer Village... this was a mud lean-to

Instrument Shop

Playing in the old school house

This man, Mr. Hoefer, makes incredible brooms. I never thought brooms could be beautiful but his were amazing! He is also a master story teller so while he makes brooms he tells fantastic stories as well.

Playing dress up!

The Blacksmith let Isaac stoke the fire...

Then pound the metal

This man, Philip Walrod, spent the better half of the morning teaching Ethan about photography. He taught Ethan to make a camera out of a shoebox and develop paper film with salt water! His pictures like this were beautiful. Ethan has already started to make his own camera

Random family pics

I had to share this weird experience we had too. We were staying in the Center cabins that were on one end of the park while the Akins were staying in the RV park on the other end. We found this quaint trail through the woods that lead from our cabin to their RV. While we were walking, we came up on these weird little items that were randomly placed on the trail. We have no idea why they were there but they were all up and down this 1/2 mile section. All kinds of "treasure" was randomly placed on the rocks along the path.

We joked that this was the bear we were hoping to see in the mountains

There were shoes...

A tea Kettle?

This Bible Verse

All kinds of ceramic statues

An over sized weeble

A dinosaur

There were so many other things that I just didn't take pictures of. It was a little creepy and I am sure there is a story behind it all but we didn't ask ;)

So ended our second whole day of vacation. The things we came away with: a broom, two coffee mugs, a bean pot, an apron, three prints from the photographer, handmade soap, books, postcards, muscadine grape juice and amazing memories that I hope last my boys lifetime!!

Because of the funeral, we left Mt. View at about 2:00 on Wednesday to head West to Oklahoma City. But again, this post is way too long and so that will have to wait until later!!