Abilene CALF 2012 Day 1

Apparently I am not yet great at keeping up with this seeing as how I just checked and the last time I wrote anything on here was over a year ago but I am really going to try to get this going now. In June we will be going to the 2nd annual Children’s Art and Literacy Festival (CALF) in Abilene. We went last year so I want to go ahead and get that done now. I actually wrote this months ago, at least six probably, but I never posted it so here goes…

Finally, I have the time to sit down and write, at least for a little bit. I know that I have yet to deliver a Dallas blog, however, I would like to do Abilene, again. We actually went since I last wrote and visited some of the places that I wanted to go to so I think this would be the proper time to add it in.

During the summer, in June to be precise, we went to the CALF in Abilene. This was the first year and the featured author was Dr. Seuss. It was a 4 day festival, Thursday June 14th through Sunday June 17th. You could pre-register or register there but I registered well in advance and ordered t-shirts as well and brunch tickets. I had everything shipped to us so it was exciting when we received the package. Each person that registered received a lanyard with a pass on it and we also received a CALF tote bag. I am really surprised that I didn’t take a picture of all this when it arrived however that doesn’t mean that I can’t take one right now.

Connor had a class that week in the afternoon so we didn’t leave until after his class on Thursday. We arrived just in time for the Hodge Podge in the Garage. This was held at the Grace Museum. There was a line to get in but it went fairly quickly. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect; the description said that you could take pictures and get autographs from some characters and that there would be music, the balloon man, and Mini Moo.

Once we entered they checked to make sure we had our passes and gave the boys autograph books. There were three characters in all and the first was The Cat in the Hat. The autographs were actually stamps and they had a table set up for each character where you could go and get your book stamped on that character’s page. There were also tattoos on the table to take as well. The second character was the Grinch. He was the version from the book and once we left Connor said that this Grinch was the happy Grinch and the one at Disney World (actually Universal’s Islands of Adventure) is the mean Grinch. The last, the Lorax, was in a separate room. There were also little noisemakers set up on his table.

Once we were done we went outside to see Mini Moo (the CALF mascot) and then went to check in at the hotel.

There were other events that day but we didn’t get there in time for them since we didn’t leave until after Connor’s class but our main goal for the day was meeting the characters so I would say that the day was a success.