Kelseyville Olive Festival

Alice and I Jumped on the chance to work at the children's both at this years Olive Festival. We got to help kids decorate crowns, run a hula hoop contest ( and attempt to hula hoop as well), listen to traditional Cherokee stories, and met a ton of great community members while we shivered together by the heaters.

I wanted to share with you one of the three stories Alice and I learned today. A long time ago there was a turtle who lived in a pool up on the mountain. He had a lot of fun playing with his friends frog and fish, but every once and a while he would look up at the sky and see the geese flying on their migration. Turtle would think to himself, "I wish I could fly." One year during the migration the geese rested at turtles pool, turtle thought to himself, "this is my chance to learn how to fly!"  

When he asked goose to help him goose looked at him strangely and said," But you have no feathers and no wings! You can't fly without those." This made turtle very sad, so he started to get creative. He knew he had a very strong jaw, so he decided if he bit down very hard in the middle of a stick, two geese could bite the ends and carry him through the sky. Before the geese left he told them his idea and they agreed to try it. Turtle found a long stick, bit down extra hard and closed his eyes. Suddenly he felt himself lift up, he opened his eyes and saw fields, mountains, and lakes. He was so happy he began to smile, forgetting that biting down was the only way he could stay in the air. Turtle crashed to the ground and his shell, that used to look like beautiful polished wood, was now shattered into pieces! 

Grandfather Winter looked down at turtle with pity saying, " turtle you have no wings or feathers, the creator did not make you a goose so you can not fly. You were made a turtle, and no goose can be a turtle." Then Grandfather Winter blew his winds and made a small tornado, picking all of turtles pieces up and fastening them back together." All you can do is be the best turtle you can be!" That is why, to this day, turtle shells look  like a lot of small pieces put back together.

This was such a touching story for me and it really got the message through to the kids, it is definitely a story for sharing! You should have seen how big the kids eyes got when the turtle shell in the story broke! Overall it was such a great day and the story made a great take home message.

For more pictures check out their facebook page! http://www.facebook.com/events/326034667428722/