The weather these past couple of days has been absolutely beautiful. It’s starting to cool off a bit (meaning the highs are in the low 80’s), so adventuring during the middle of the day is much more pleasant.

Seeing that the day was shaping up to be so beautiful yesterday, we packed up the kids and headed to the Winter Park Art Festival. If you haven’t been to an art festival, it’s pretty easy to imagine. Picture a bunch of artists selling their wares from canvas booths in a park. The artists typically vary widely in style, turning the whole thing into a fun open air art exhibit. There are painters, sculptors, weavers, photographers, jewelers, ironworkers, woodworkers… pretty much every kind of art you can imagine. There are also food vendors hawking popcorn, turkey legs, and the typical festival food you would expect.

In this case, the park was in downtown Winter Park and the booths lined the sidewalks, leaving the grassy areas free for people to loll about. There were plenty of people lolling.

At one point, as we were taking a shortcut through the grass, we came across a 20-something girl sprawled on her back on the grass. She was wearing a white shirt, blue shorts, no shoes, and sunglasses – and appeared to be asleep. My oldest was fascinated.

He literally stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the girl. We tried to push him forward, but he just edged his way around, doing a circle around her. “Look, look!” he said.

“Yes, she’s sleeping,” I said, trying to grab his hand so I could pull him away.

He dodged me, still pointing at her.

“No, no! Look! Look!”

Then it hit me. He wasn’t staring at her legs. He was staring at her feet. “You’re right. She doesn’t have any shoes on.”

“She has bare feet!” He announced, laughing. “She has bare feet!”

He’s still fascinated by the concept of people taking their shoes off in public. I have no idea why. Once we acknowledged that she did, in fact, have bare feet, he was happy to let us lead him away. 

My wife poked me as we left, pointing out the “sleeping” girl’s face. She was smiling from ear to ear, clearly trying not to laugh.