Unprepared

I convinced Joel to come with me and the kids on an ill-fated trip to Charlotte's annual Asian Festival, about 45 minutes away at Lake Norman. When we arrived, we discovered that we needed to park down the street from the entrance to the park where the festival was being held, and ride a shuttle into the park. The shuttle was actually a big tour bus, which both the kids thoroughly enjoyed riding. Neither one of them has ever been on a bus before, so it was a novel experience.

We arrived at the festival grounds, and since it was around lunch time we bought some food from one of the concessions and settled down at a picnic area right by the water to eat and watch the dragon boat races. All went well for a while -- Rebecca enjoyed watching the boats and the water from her stroller, and after Ben ate we allowed him to take off his shoes and wade in the lake with some other children.

And then the heavens opened up, and a torrential downpour began. As the title of this post suggests, I was entirely unprepared for the possibility of rain, having not brought rain gear or umbrellas. We sheltered under a canopy with some other festival-goers, most of whom had umbrellas (which fact Joel pointed out to me numerous times as in, everyone else brought an umbrella, why didn't we?) But our meager shelter was no match for the pouring rain, and by the end of the downpour we all looked like we'd taken a fully-clothed swim in the lake. We seriously would not have been any wetter if we had.

Poor Becca was bawling, but Ben was pretty stoic. After that we decided we'd had enough, and we squelched back to wait for the shuttle (along with half the rest of the people there). Back at the car I changed Rebecca into a dry diaper and a semi-dry t shirt, but I didn't have a change of clothes -- or even a towel -- for anyone else. We cranked up the heat and the seat warmers and had a soggy drive home.

It was a memorable afternoon, just not in the way I originally had envisioned.