A few weeks ago my family attended the Utah Winter
Faire. It was a
multi-fandom celebration of the holidays & beginning of the winter
season. Being that we love going to
conventions to celebrate our geek side, we were quite excited to go.
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| Completing a portion of their quest |
The Utah Winter Faire was a lovely experience.
It was just a few miles away from our home, and it was a smaller size than the massive conventions
that Salt Lake City has recently hosted.
Many people were dressed up in fun fashions, with steampunk and wintery
themes dominating. Upon entering our
children were given a pamphlet that included a quest to find certain people in
order to earn a knighthood. This portion
they adored.
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| The kids getting knighted after completing all of their quest |
There was some good entertainment. On Saturday, we were greatly entertained by
an Irish dancing troupe, Rinceoiri Don Spraoi.
At the end of their performance they invited audience members to join in
the fun. They posted a video YouTube,
and you can witness the fun my children had:
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AJ661qqYDt4" width="480"></iframe>
(If the embeding code isn't working,
click here to be taken to the video)
Zelda has been wanting to get into Irish dancing for a
while, and so after the performance I talked with some representatives. We are all now looking to get signed up for
lessons this coming spring. Quite
fitting considering our annual Celtic fest that my family puts on.
The following morning we attended our highly anticipated
special event of the Winter Faire: Brunch with Santa! I must say, this was such a highlight of the
weekend. It was a small group of
attendees,
and I imagine there were more on Saturday’s brunch, so this made for
a quiet and relaxing atmosphere. We were
greeted and shown a table that had crafts for the children to do. Food was soon served buffet style, and it was
all super tasty, home-made goodness. As
we enjoyed our selection of food, a steampunk Santa made his entrance with his
fanciful elf. Both of them came to each
table to spend time with our children.
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| "Coolest Santa Ever!" according to Zelda |
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| The children and Sugar Elf |
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| The children loved working on crafts. |
My kids were a bit shy, and Santa and his elf handled it
wonderfully. By the end my little ones
weren’t shy anymore. After eating, Santa
read a story for all of the children.
Then they were each given a turn on his lap to tell him of their gift
wishes, and my daughter said she just wanted everyone to be happy. Aww.
We were allowed to take several photos.
I must say this event was excellent and we are already looking forward
to doing it again next year. Hopefully we
can bring some friends along to share the joy!
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| Even Shrek came by to hang out at Santa's Brunch |
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| Link and his bag of goodies from Santa |
After the brunch we headed back to the main portion of the
Winter Faire. We browsed the vendors,
bought a few gifts for family and something for myself, and enjoyed more
entertainment. We were treated to an
awesome combat ring where the fighters really went for it, and not with nerf
swords! It was so cool, though it did
intimidate my daughter a little. The
attendees and vendors that we visited with were all wonderful. We made some new friends as we talked about
shared interests.
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| Old school sword combat. Yes! |
