A day in my hometown

 

Yesterday, the kids and I went for an outing to Old Town Manassas. The town was hosting the Heritage Railway Festival.  Along with the festival, there were vendors, the regularly scheduled farmer's market, and tons of food vendors.  Honestly, leaving my house I wasn't really looking forward to going but Emory LOVES trains so I wanted to go for his sake if nothing else. Boy did my attitude change when we got there! We took time to explore the vendors and I found a vendor selling organic body products. The owners were there and more than happy to talk about their products, chat with the kids, etc.  For a crunchy mama like me, that was heaven.  I ended up picking up a few items though I wanted them all! I purchased the peppermint astringent spray, the natural deodorant, the tick repellent (good for dogs and people), and the bug spray.  I have been debating making these myself but these kind folks has them all ready to go for me.  We had a nice conversation about natural deodorant which I can revisit in a later post. If you are interested, check them out at  http://easthamfarms.com/.

One of the other vendors was Whistle Stop Toy and Hobby (check them out on FB).  Again, the nicest people! More than willing to talk about the trains they were selling.  I made a on the spot decision that this precious boy that loves trains more than anything else would be allowed to get a train set that day. You should have see his face! He was so excited even though I told him we would have to wait until we left to pick it up.

After checking out the vendor row, we went to the farmer's market. We picked up some amazing summer veggies; beets, cabbage, kale, summer squash, onions and small potatoes.  Now we will have some great veggies to accompany our meals throughout the week. The best part was watching Emory picking out the veggies for me and Leia's excitement over the fresh kale. She is a addicted! We also stopped at a Mt. Crawford Creamery's tent selling milk. We talked about their milk and a little about the fact that Leia has to drink lactose free milk. At this point my cash was running low so we opted for the half gallon of chocolate milk (Hey, if I am going to have dairy mind as well go all the way!) but I know we will be back for the whole milk. http://www.mtcrawfordcreamery.com/index.html

Our final stop was under the big pavilion where the model trains were set up, there were amazing.   But what was more amazing was watching my sweet boy's face as he walked from each different set up.

Unfortunately, it was too crowded for us to eat in the town yesterday. We took our bags of goodies and headed back to the car to find a lunch spot. All of this fun activity right in my hometown. I felt good that our money was spent supporting local small businesses that care about relationships more than the dollar.