Fairy Dust.

Last weekend, Todd and I took Marley and Rudy to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay for their annual Fairy House Festival. I had read about it in some odd parenting magazine in some kind of sidebar, and remember thinking, "Hmph. That sounds precious."

It was.

To begin, the weather on Saturday morning when we arrived was sunny and coastal breezy and warm. Marley and Rudy first went into the Visitors' Center to take part in the workshop I signed them up for: making their own tiny fairies and fairy babies. Deluxe. And then we walked out into the gardens, which were ridiculously beautiful. Even better was the Children's Garden, which was like a storybook landscape we were able to stroll through.

On Saturday, we explored the gardens, ate a fancy lunch al fresco, and watched about ten minutes of A Midsummer Night's Dream put on by a company called Shakespeare's Kids before we wandered over to the lawn where, of course, a bubble machine had been going all day beside vendors selling tutus, wings and wands, storybooks about fairies and gnomes and the Tomten I remember fondly from my childhood. There were fairy house supplies, little acorn birdhouses, and branches and twigs transformed into chairs, plates, and cups. And a truck selling ice cream. It was like when something's so cute you just want to throw it across the room. I wanted to throw the whole place.

After Marley took part in a Fairy Yoga class while Todd watched and Rudy and I found a stone bench on which she could perform what we call her Squa-Squa Dance (I am trying desperately to record an authentic, un-self-conscious version for posterity.), we got some ice cream to eat under a giant pergola, and then we went for a short hike.

It was a nearly perfect day. And then that night, it rained.

And the next morning, the clouds let loose, alternately, drizzle and chilly, full-fledged rain. We went back to the Visitors' Center for Marley's Dragonfly Mobile workshop, but the forecast was depressing us, and let's just say that Rudy's mood did not match her sparkly plum leotard and pink tutu, a hand-me-down from Marley's first ballet recital. At one point, Rudy was wailing, naked except for her diaper, beside the display of professional fairy houses in the Garden's Education Center, which helps to illustrate how things had changed from the day before.

Then we remembered that there were two sweet little cottages nestled in the Children's Garden, and that one, called the Story Barn, was filled with library books and chairs and a table in the corner topped with baskets of crayons and colored pencils and coloring pages of fairies. So we went there to wait out what turned out to be the worst of the rain, and then the girls were cold and wet enough to put on their custom-made, pink Hawk hoodies. (I only point it out because they usually refuse to wear them, and I always feel so disappointed when they do, mostly because I thought they were a delightful perk of being a coach's kid.) And we revisited a tree house with nets for climbing and benches for relaxing before we went to a slideshow by the author of a book about fairy houses, had another fancy lunch, and watched what even I would call, and this is not a word I often use seriously, an enchanting little puppet show.

And then, before we left, Marley and Rudy joined the dozens of other little girls wearing wings for a class in Fairy Ballet. Marley, predictably, took it very seriously and fluttered her arms and hands as slowly and gracefully as she could. Rudy tried to follow along, but mostly stomped around, smacked her wand against the floor, and wandered into the middle of the room while the rest of the fairies leapt in a circle around her and a couple of other little sisters.

It was a weekend of just what I needed. Some time with my family, and especially my little girls, away from all the other things that I didn't feel like thinking about or doing. It was a tiny bit of magic. Like two days sprinkled with fairy dust.