A few weeks ago, we went to the annual Star Wars Festival in Joliet. We went in
2013 and
2014, and had a lot of fun. I really didn't want to miss it this year, even if it did overlap with one of my craziest weekends all year. (Let's just say I had hundreds of pages of final papers to grade for my grad students.) This event was a great distraction from my work, and a ton of fun for the boys.
There was no shortage of costumed ladies and gentlemen at this event, and Henry and Nick wanted to check out every last Jedi, Storm Trooper, and weirdly tattooed individual.
I'm told the guy standing next to Grandma Toni is Darth Maul. Henry was only a little afraid of him. Nick? No fear at all. The boys wanted me to dress up too, but I didn't have anything appropriate to wear, so I improvised with the Princess Leia buns.
There was so much to see, and everything was exciting to Henry. . . especially his new action figure.
I ended up missing most of the Star Wars references at this event, since I still haven't ever seen any of the movies all the way through. That doesn't seem to dampen the enthusiasm of these boys, though.
Nick found one of the dolls during the trash compactor challenge. He was very proud of himself! Henry had a costumed visitor while he was doing Death Star Bowling.
They want me to take them bowling for real, now. If this summer continues to be so rainy, we'll have lots of opportunities.
There's only one opportunity each year, though, to whack off this abominable snowman's arm with a light saber.
We got to hear some cool tunes from some interesting characters, as well.
Note the large wookie gentleman playing the guitar on the stage behind Nick.
I'd call it a fun day, although all of us (myself included) needed a nap afterwards!
Perhaps the greatest drama of our day was when we went looking for the van and couldn't find it, even when we searched the entire parking garage. Turns out there are two nearly identical-looking parking garages, just a few blocks apart. I suppose we could've used the force then.
