Little Clown

Annabelle is a strawberry fanatic. When Nick heard that there was a strawberry festival a few towns away, naturally, we just had to take her. Imagine a whole festival devoted to strawberries! For someone as small and as mad as Annabelle, that would be a dream come true.

The entire way there all she talked about was how she was going to eat all the strawberries and bring home a big basket full. She was so excited! But when we got there she sadly asked the burning question... Where are all the strawberries? We walked up and down the rows of tents looking for the strawberries; we saw pottery, we saw jewelry, we saw some nice crafty handbags, and some framed artwork. There were plants, and balloons, and all sorts of knickknacks... But there were no strawberries. We kept looking.

Finally, on our second go around, we noticed a group of people standing in a line in front of a frail old woman, who was seated under a tent behind a huge cash box. She was taking their money and handing them tickets. Then we saw the sign... STRAWBERRY, could it be? Actual strawberries? But why is there a need for tickets? Are they housing the world's largest strawberry in there, we wondered? We read further... STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE.

Strawberry shortcake? All these people are waiting in line for strawberry shortcake? Maybe the strawberry shortcake lady knows where the real strawberries are, we thought. So we waited in the line. When we reached the old woman and inquired as to where all the strawberries were hiding, we found out that this was it; the highlight of the festival. People waited all year for this strawberry shortcake. Turns out, the only strawberries we would be seeing at the "strawberry" festival were in the form of shortcake. How disappointing for the small one, so we thought...

We got her a bowl of strawberry shortcake and a few balloons and she was as grateful as if we had let her loose in a strawberry field on an empty stomach!