One of our favorite annual spring events, the Tribeca Film Festival, is set to take over downtown Wednesday, April 17 to Sunday, April 28, and as always there are lots of awesome activities for families. The popular Tribeca Family Festival Street Fair takes place on Saturday, April 27. While Mommy Poppins won't have a booth like we did a few years back, many of us plan on attending with our families. Yes it's always crowded but it's also packed with surprises, great things to do and cool entertainment.

In addition to the Family Festival Street Fair, which includes Tribeca/ESPN Sports Day, there will be "drive-in" movies, a mini-film fest of kid-made shorts as well as flicks you can watch online. Here's the scoop on these great events, all of which are FREE.

Are we the only ones who felt like this was a long, slow week? Maybe it has something to do with this being the first full week back after spring break. The awesome spring weather doesn't help either: How can we focus on work when there are parks and playgrounds calling out to us? Not to mention the hypnotic tinkling of the invading ice cream trucks.

Still, we found time to do some work. We launched our NYC Kid-Friendly Restaurant Guide and even added a pair of tasty new posts: Restaurants where kids can make their own food and an international food crawl on Ninth Avenue to go with our Midtown West coverage.

If you're looking to take a seasonal day trip, our Long Island site profiled New York State Parks in Nassau and Suffolk Counties that are filled with all kinds of outdoor fun like boating, fishing, biking, horseback riding and golfing, not to mention the opportunity to commune with nature. Meanwhile, our New Jersey site has a roundup of animal-filled farms where kids can get up close and personal with alpacas, llamas, sheep, goats, ponies, chickens, miniature horses and more.

And those are just a few ways to take advantage of spring now that it's sprung. Here's what else we covered on our NYC site this week:

We enjoyed our first no coat day this week so hopefully spring is here to stay. There are certainly lots of great ways to enjoy the season this weekend including the Queens County Farm Museum's annual Children's Carnival, hands-on gardening for kids at the New York Botanical Garden and the shearing of the heather in Fort Tryon Park.

Worried the weather won't cooperate? That's okay because there are plenty of awesome indoor activities, too, like the gloriously geeky The Intergalactic Nemesis at the New Victory Theater, BAMcinématek's Hayao Miyazaki animated movie retrospective and a few really cool FREE events at local public libraries and parks.

These are just a few of the great things going on this weekend. All of our best bets are below. You can find additional options in our Event Calendar and our Spring Fun Guide.