Don’t be scared of a few April showers. There are lots of ways to spend some sunny days outside this month!

Dominion Family Easter at Maymont
Saturday, April 4, 2015
10am-3pm
Maymont Carriage House Lawn

Enjoy one of Richmond’s favorite Easter traditions with egg hunts, crafts, games, live entertainment including Power UP!, School of Rock, Jonathan Austin and  Virginia Repertory Theatre.  Kids can enjoy a ziplines, a rock climbing wall, carriage rides, egg hunt and puppet shows and more. FREE to attend although many activities will require tickets.

Legend Brewing Company’s 21st Anniversary Party
Saturday, April 11th
2pm – 9pm
Pub and Brewery -321 W 7th St, Richmond, Virginia 23224
This event is open to the public and is family friendly. Legend will have live music playing all day, a food buffet, activities for children, and of course, a varied selection of Legend beers.Admission for 21 and up is $20 which includes a commemorative anniversary cup, two beer tickets, and live music and entertainment. Ages 12-20 and designated drivers pay $8 and kids under 12 are FREE. Additional beer tickets and a food tickets are available for purchase.

22nd Earth Day Festival
Saturday, April 18
at 11:00am – 5:00pm

Great Shiplock Park on Shockoe Bottom’s riverfront on Saturday, April 18 for live music, local fare, children’s activities, and the chance to meet hundreds of earth-friendly artists, farmers, and organizations.

RVA Earth Day
Saturday, April 18
12:00pm – 7:00pm

Style Weekly is proud to bring you the city’s favorite celebration of earth day, were local artists, bands, chefs, food trucks, breweries, environmentalists and vendors gather to celebrate mother earth. Learn about locally available sustainable products and services. Arts, crafts and kids activities.

Gold Festival on Broad 
Sunday, April 19, 2015
1:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Gold’s Gym Plaza at West Tower between Homeview Drive & West End Drive

The Gold Festival on Broad is a day filled with family fun!  The event will take place inside the Gold’s Gym parking lot between Homeview Drive and West End Drive.  In addition to providing a fun, festive event, the Gold Festival on Broad provides a turnkey fundraising opportunity for local community organizations. Exclusive areas within the festival for specially-themed activities, and vendors, such as the educational classes, fitness expo, and the community corner. FREE.

Woofstock Festival
Saturday, April 25, 2015
10:00am – 2:00pm.

Gates will open at 10:00am for the festival. There will be music all day and plenty of fun for the dogs, including games, agility courses and contests. The whole family will also be able to enjoy the kids games, vendor area, and our dog adoption area, which will include animal rescue groups from across the metro Richmond area.

 Get the mid-week update from Richmondmom by signing up for our newsletter. You’ll get an up-to-date look at kid and family friendly events, free things to do, activities and more in the Richmond, Virginia area.  You’ll also read stories, get school and playgroup information, dinner ideas, shopping, camp information, volunteering and a whole lot more. Sign up for our newsletter here and find us on Facebook.

We’ve got 3 family 4-packs to the Virginia Horse Festival!

Enjoy three days of family-friendly entertainment and activities at the Virginia Horse Festival March 27-29 at The Meadow Event Park in Caroline County.

Learn more about the Virginia Horse Festival here.

Enter to win below:

Three winners will be chosen at random.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tickets provided by the Virginia Horse Festival

Mommy & Me (and Daddy Too)!  is a FREE morning out with live entertainment and activities designed to enhance parent’s interaction with their children outside in the sun on the Willow Lawn Plaza.

As always, come say hello to us at the Richmondmom.com table! We’ll have treats for the kids and we always love chatting with you.

Don’t forget this event is FREE!

MOMMY & ME (And Daddy Too!)

2nd Wednesday of Each Month
10:00am–11:30am Willow Lawn Plaza

See you there!

Don’t miss out on Free events the whole family can enjoy!
Sign up for the mid-week update from Richmondmom by signing up for our newsletter. You’ll get an up-to-date look at kid and family friendly events and activities in the Richmond, Virginia area as well as great stories, school and playgroup information, dinner ideas, shopping, volunteering and a whole lot more. Sign up for our Wednesday newsletter here and find us on Facebook.

The Vernal Equinox marks the changing season as the earth travels around the sun. It’s one of two days in the year when the Earth’s axis tilts neither away from nor towards the sun, and the sun’s rays shine perpendicular to the equator. Day and night are in perfect balance as the hours of daylight and darkness are (nearly) exactly equal.

Following cold Winter’s low sun the days will finally begin to grow warmer and longer.

As I continue to explore and embrace seasonal living I’m moved to celebrate the start of Spring as it returns to us. It’s time to wake up from our sleepy hibernation and reacquaint ourselves with the joy and beauty of nature as it presents itself in Spring.

Here are a few simple welcoming rituals for you and your littles, to connect with each other and with nature, as the season turns to more light and new life and promise for what is to come.

1. Take a short nature hike, rain or shine, to observe together the seasonal changes. Collect signs of Spring or other interesting finds. Don’t forget to bring a little bucket or tote to carry your goodies home. Display them in a special place or use them to decorate a Naturescape.
2. Create a Spring Naturescape. Use colorful felt, fabric, or tissue paper to create a backdrop and add in any found nature items, pretend animals, bugs, or figures you have on hand—anything that makes you or your kids happy and reminds you of springtime.
3. Watch the sun rise together. With the time change you may be up anyway! Check out Time and Date to find out what time the sun will rise in your neighborhood.
4. Get outside to enjoy the sunshine. Enjoy a meal or snack porch-side to soak up the rays and talk about your hopes and plans for Spring.
5. Dust off your helmets and go for a bike ride.
6. Challenge your kids to an indoor or outdoor color scavenger hunt. They can work alone or as a team, and you can play too.
7. Make colors! Use the primary paint colors blue, red, and yellow to mix secondary colors purple, orange, and green. Use white to play with different tints, and black paint to change the shade.
8. Make natural dyes with your kids from foods and spices in your own pantry or backyard, and use them to dye eggs together. For a little twist you can write words or good wishes on them and let each person in your family choose an egg at random to find out what good Spring will bring.
9. Start your seeds: we saved a mango and avocado seed to sprout in the windowsill. You could start garden seedlings inside, involve your kids in your plans for yard plantings, or pot some plants for the porch.
10. Buy flowers or pick some greenery to bring Spring inside.
11. Wear spring colors to feel cheerful and in the season.
12. Brighten up the yard: paint rocks, sticks, or tree trunks; use colorful chalk on the sidewalks or patio to draw flowers and chicks and other signs of Spring.
13. Make a bird nest basket by filling a produce clamshell tied and hung with string, or suet bird feeder, with loose yarn, thread, hair from a hairbrush, shredded paper, cotton balls, or twine. You can also create little piles in nooks and crannies, or drape them around the yard.

photo credit: Kevin J Kelley

Sometimes when you live in a city, you forget to be a tourist in your own home town.  This weekend there are no excuses because you’ll be able to check out some of Richmond’s vibrant history for free.

Bring your passport and travel back in time and taking a free tour of 10 historic homes, Saturday and Sunday, March 21-22, 2015.

Get complimentary admission to any of the 10 participating sites.

Haven’t toured these sites before? Here’s what you can expect to do (for free) over the weekend:
-See the beautiful gardens and tour Agecroft Hall which was built in the 1500’s (how is that possible? find out on the tour)
-Civil war buffs can visit General Robert E. Lee’s field headquarters at the Dabbs House Museum.
-Play a round of play a round of quoits at the The John Marshall House.
-Take a grand tour of the “upstairs” and “downstairs” at Maymont for a taste of the guilded age.
-Take a glimpse in to rural life at Meadow Farm Museum just before the civil war.
-Visit Richmond’s oldest residential structure and see the largest collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s personal belongings, manuscripts and letters at The Edgar Allan Poe Museum.
-Virginia House (neighbors to Agecroft Hall) has a stunning collection of English and Spanish antiques, silk draperies, Oriental carpets, and fine silver and china.
-White House of the Confederacy take a guided tour of the home to the President of the Confederate states of America, Jefferson Davis and is now the Museum of the Confederacy.
-At the 1812 John Wickham House you can explore 19th-century Federal architecture see some of the country’s finest examples of interior decorative painting.
-Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and the Marquise de Lafayette all stayed at the Wilton House which overlooks the James River.
Download and print out this Time Travelers Passport to visit any and all of these locations.   Visit them all and you’ll have saved more than $55 per person. (Some restrictions may apply.)

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey have 3 different versions crisscrossing the country and the theme for Richmond this year is “Legends” and if you’re a super circus fan, you can also catch Circus Xtreme as they pass through Norfolk in April.

We made sure to get there about an hour early (highly recommended), since there is an exciting and free All-Access Pre-Show down on the arena floor, offering about 45 minutes to an hour of fun and interaction with circus performers: clowns, photo ops and even some animals. There were even several opportunities for kids to participate! Our daughter and son decided to observe but really got a kick out of watching the other kids “perform”.

They asked everyone to clear the floor shortly before 7pm and we made our way to our seats, which were already filled by a very cute family who promptly told us they knew they were in the wrong place. Long story short, we ended up swapping with them and moved up several rows, just three rows from the ring! The kids thought it was a very cool upgrade.

The show started in usual fashion with the Star Spangled Banner and a parade of animals and performers gearing up to excite and entertain. I’ve only been to a few circus’s as an adult, but the opening never fails to activate the kid in me.

Once the show gets started, it never lets up, at least until the intermission, but then they’re right back at it; performing and mesmerizing until the end.

This is your quintessential circus, the kind you think of when someone says the word: a sequined larger than life Ring Master, tons of clowns and their shenanigans, elephants, dancing dogs, lion tamers and acts of unimaginable human balance and strength.

Highlights for us were the Globe of Steel and the eight, full grown men and their – albeit less than fullsize – motorcycles, crammed into that cage and whirring around at crazy speeds without incident. I wonder how many emergency room visits are required to earn your spot on the team?

Another favorite and heavily featured is the China Acrobatic Troupe. Their incredible acrobatic feats are not to be missed and include the men’s hoop diving and pole jumping and the incredible young women performing a Diabolo “ballet” which will have you mesmerized. If you don’t know what a Diabolo is, you’ll just have to go to the circus and find out!

Of course, one of the kids’ favorites were the performing dogs, and our son’s favorite, performing pigs! For them, nothing beat the hilarity of a Chihuahua and Jack Russell dancing, jumping and fumbling around for laughs. The performance included some very talented poodles, goats, llamas, donkeys and even a couple of kangaroos.

I happen to like the big cats and, honestly, there were a couple of times when I thought the lion would come out on top after all. At one point the “lion tamer” was backed up against the cage by an aggressively advancing lion, and maybe it was staged, but it definitely got my heart thumping, umm and not at all rooting for the lion.

And despite all the controversy regarding the elephants and no matter where you stand on the issue, it is definitely an experience seeing them up close and personal. I for one am glad they will be phased out over the next couple of years and think it was a wise decision. Now perhaps they can concentrate on the conservation of Asian Elephants without the poor karma surrounding their use in shows.

There is so much more to the circus and so many other incredible acts, that you’re really just going to have to go check it out. Be warned though, the concessions are out in full force, both stationary and mobile, so either make sure you’re equipped to concede to your kids’ non-stop requests or lay down the law before arriving!

We thoroughly enjoyed our night out and recommend that you grab some tickets if it’s your kind of thing or if you’ve never been before. I’ll take any opportunity to feel like a kid again!

Like this article? You may also be interested in:

Ringling Bros. is Listening to Audiences and Phasing Out Elephants by 2018

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Presents LEGENDS

Read more Real Richmond Reviews

Tickets for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus were provided by Feld Entertainment in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are purely my own.

Go on a swashbuckling adventure at Virginia Rep this weekend!

Win a 4 pack of tickets to see Treasure Island at the Children’s Theatre at Willow Lawn.
Winner will be contacted via email and can redeem their tickets for any one of the following nights:
Fri 3/13/15 7:00PM
Sat 3/14/15 10:30AM
Sat 3/14/15 2:00PM
Sun 3/15/15 2:00PM

The show is about 1 hour long and suitable for children ages 6 and up.

Learn more about the show here

Enter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway
  Treasure Island opens Friday, March 13 at the Children’s Theatre at Willow Lawn, 1601 Willow Lawn Drive, Richmond, Va. The show runs March 13 –  April 19 2015. Learn more here.    

Virginia Rep is a sponsor of Richmondmom