First Friday in Leonardtown

On the first Friday of each month, downtown Leonardtown hosts First Friday. The idea is to get people out to support local businesses and the businesses stay open later than usual. There isn't all that much to do downtown...its about the size of downtown Enterprise except there's no Smoochies. There is a small, fancy kitchen store (think Pure Imagination but 1/4 the size), a used book store that is kind of cool, 3 nice restaurants, an awesome pet store, an art gallery that did a wonderful job, the hair salon (where I'm getting my hair cut next week) and a coffee shop.

We took the boys to the pet store first and it was like a free zoo. If I was more of a cynic, I would worry that this pet store is importing illegal animals! They had 2 giant tortises that were 5 years old and about 2 1/2 feet in shell diameter. You could literally reach in and pet their heads (which we all did)! These are the tortises that live between 150 and 200 years! It was weird to hear the kid (must be the owners 10 year old son) tell Nolen that this tortise will live longer than Nolen. They also have about 12 different kinds of snakes, a bunch of cool turtles, frogs, lizards, iguanas, birds, birds and more birds, and fish. We saw a starfish, yellow seahorses (priced at $119 each or $200 a pair), fire shrimp and your typical array of freshwater and saltwater fish.

These painted herons are all over St. Mary's County. It was dark out, so the picture isn't that good.

We told the boys that after our walk we would get desert somewhere. We intended to go to the Doo Dah Deli and get ice cream, but instead we hung out at the coffee shop. Nolen chose a chocolate chip cookie, but Max chose a piece of pie called Vesuvius! Nothing stops that kid! By the end of the night the kids were on a serious sugar high!

There was a 7 piece high school jazz band playing there. They were pretty good but I think the trumpet player was nervous. I can play trumpet better than that (I think). The boys enjoyed the music - of course Nolen thought it was too loud and covered his ears.