Welcome to Stem Fest 2012

Oops, I mean Tulip Time 2012.

If you aren't from the West Michigan area, Tulip Time is an annual celebration of the Dutch Heritage of Holland. In typical years, there are blooming tulips everywhere. However, this year we had some unusually warm days in March. Consequently, most of the tulips are already past their prime. And thus many have dubbed this year's festival as Stem Fest 2012. They even have t-shirts with Stem Fest Logos, as seen here.

Despite the lack of bright blooming tulips, that isn't stopping the locals from getting out and celebrating what Tulip Time is really about. That's right. Going downtown and pigging out on some greasy fair food.
During Tulip Time, downtown Holland is sieged by all the mobile food stands. Below is one of the junk food alleys that are all over downtown.

Being good locals, we met up with some friends to indulge ourselves on the greasy goodness like the glutinous masses.

There are so many options that sometime it is hard to pick your poison. That's why I typically make multiple stops.

Jamie has been belly aching for weeks about how she's been wanting an elephant ear. So that is where we headed first.

Yep, that made her happy.

Mmmm, elephant ears. Satisfying pregnant women every where.

I ended up eating a corn dog, and then later a Polish sausage. While we eating, my friend Justin was impressing the crowd with his bilingual dog.

Seeing a dog respond to commands in both English and Spanish is definitely impressive. Good dog, Naiya. After we gorged ourselves, we headed down to Kollen's park for the fireworks, where we had an annoying group of high schoolers sit in front of us and annoy the crap out of us. They kept standing up and sitting down, and switching who they wanted to sit by. Stinking kids. Man, I sound like an 80 year old man.

Any ways, there were fireworks.

Yep, it was a pretty good day.

Oh yeah, just to prove that there are tulips at Tulip Time....