Snippets From our 'California Strawberry Festival 2016' Experience

Ever since I was a little girl living in Oxnard, I fantasized about the strawberry festival. I envisioned an all-around strawberry paradise of unimaginable proportions. 
We never went because it was literally held in our backyard (Oxnard is a smallish city) and we truly believed in the certainty behind the words: "there's always next year." But year after year we kept missing it. Until this weekend.

My sister Irene and I picking strawberries near our grandmother's house. Circa 1986.

The California Strawberry Festival 2016 was fun but extremely crowded. 
There were long lines for everything. 
The Früli line (strawberry beer) went around the corner. We waited about an hour for Benny to get a face painting. 
There were crowds everywhere, just trying to get their hands on an attractive order of a strawberry something. 
Meanwhile, protesters outside the festival boycotting the event handed out flyers reminding us that strawberry field workers are commonly mistreated on the job (didn't expect this)! I guess you can say the experience was different than the expectation. 
That's not to say we regret going. After all, we do feel a sense of pride knowing that so many people travel from all over the place to enjoy two days of strawberry madness in my very own hometown!

We made the best of our expedition to the festival and waited in line for the strawberry beer, which helped with the patience required to wait in line for Benny to get his face painting (a baseball on fire). We had several strawberry goodies and a ton of carnival food.

Benny rode the Berry-Go-Round and took a sweet picture with a cute girl dressed as Strawberry Shortcake and my sister bought a big box of organic strawberries to keep the theme going at home. My nose and arms look strawberry red because I got sunburned but the boys are fine and overall, it was nice to people-watch, share some laughs with husband and sister and enjoy an outing with my baby boy too, who got a diaper change on a changing table with a strawberry pattern cover!
Berry good memories indeed. 

Have a good week, everyone!