Touch a Truck

Sunday morning, after a nice breakfast at our favorite bagel shop, we headed to the annual “Touch a Truck” event in Huntersville, North Carolina.

“Touch a Truck” is held at a huge park and they basically bring in anykind of vehicle you can imagine – and the kids can go to town playing in them, setting off the lights and sirens, and pretending to drive to their heart’s content!

For two days we have been talking about this event with the kids – Aidan has been talking about all of the vehicles, and Ella could not stop talking about riding a pony.

I should note that Ella has finally discoved the fun of dressing up, and has worn one of her pink tutus for three days straight. She insists on wearing it just about everywhere these days.

Once we arrived, we went directly to the pony rides! Aidan was up first and loved it – until they put the helmet on his head. That started the waterworks and the immediate clinging to Daddy and refusal to stay on the pony.

Well, Ella took one look at what Aidan did and decided that she was not going to ride the pony either, and erupted into her typical Ella wailing and crying. Despite my repeated attempts, the closest we got was to touch the pony’s muzzle – at which point the pony let out a nice loud whinny, scaring the heck out of Ella even more. She was done!

We spent the rest of the morning getting in and out of truck after truck after truck!! Aidan sampled a garbage truck, a moving truck, a mail truck, a fire truck, an armored car, an ambulance (or “anamance” as he calls it), several jeeps, a forklift, tractors, a racecar, bulldozers, and even a helicopter. There were many more, but after a while, they all seemed to run together to me.

Ella refused to get into a single vehicle, so we spent our time playing with bubbles, sitting in the field and watching the ponies while I made one last failed plea with her to try and ride just one pony before we decided to give up and wound up picking out a new headband and tutu from the one "girlie" vendor at the event.

Despite my disappointment at Ella and Aidan’s lack of interest in the sport nearest and dearest to my heart, we all had a wonderful morning together as a family. Who knows, I still may be able to have one little equestrian to carry on the family sport someday – I don’t give up this easily!