This weekend is all about festivals! Enjoy all things Greek at North Hempstead Beach Park. For an aquatic twist, head over to the Fish Hatchery Festival in Cold Spring Harbor. The streets of Hempstead come alive during the African American Heritage Parade & Festival. In the mood for live music or art? Why not enjoy both at the Jamboozi Festival at The Vanderbilt Museum. It's still apple season and there's no better way to celebrate the harvest than by attending the Apple Festival at the Sherwood Jayne House. There's even a festival for dogs at Old Westbury Gardens. As always, check our events calendar every day for fun activities for the family.

The first full weekend of fall, and there are plenty of things for families to do in and around Boston, from festivals (Fluff Fest, New England Americana Festival, Boston Seafood Festival) to free admissions (Smithsonian Museum Day, National Public Land Day), and everything in between. Read on for details, and be sure to check our Events Calendar as we continually update and add to it.

Also this week week on Mommy Poppins Boston:

• Tara writes about her ideal fall day with kids in Beantown;
• Our friends at Appalachian Mountain Club have some great spots to take the kiddos to play Old MacDonald and befriend a few farm animals;
• We've found places where families can not only pick their own pumpkins but also enjoy petting farms, hayrides and corn mazes;
• Kristin reviews Aura Restaurant’s fine dining family style - an experience that takes family dining to a new level;
• Celeste offers tips for taking an international flight with your little one - a must-read for anyone planning a family trip that involves air travel.

Enjoy!

With almost as many restaurants as NYU students, the East Village offers a wide variety of places to eat. The big issue for parents is that many of the eateries aren't traditionally family-friendly. They're pricey with exotic dishes (by kid standards, anyway), and filled with black-clad twenty-somethings who roll their eyes at the very sight of a child.

But as long as you're not expecting high chairs or chicken fingers and fries, there are a lot of great East Village restaurants that welcome families, even though they're not the main clientele. My daughter and I spend a lot of time in the neighborhood and we're big fans of a lot of local eateries, both new and old. And when I say old, I mean it: Some of our top picks, like Indian Row, date back to my childhood. Others, like Yonah Schimmel, my 78-year-old mother remembers going to as a kid!

We finish up our month-long focus on the East Village with a roundup of our 15 favorite places to eat in the area with kids, most of which my family can vouch for personally. You can find more family dining posts in our NYC Kid-Friendly Restaurant Guide.

Send September off with a bang this weekend in Westchester. Two art shows are taking place all weekend--the Armonk Outdoor Art Show and the New Rochelle Arts Fest. The Bear Mountain Oktoberfest continues this weekend as well.

On Saturday head to Green Chimneys for the Fall Harvest Festival. If you’re feeling more competitive, the Sleepy Hollow Adventure Race Experience allows you to compete with your children on the beautiful Hudson River waterfront. Stick around afterwards for the Sleepy Hollow Oktoberfest at Kingsland Point Park.

Great family fun continues on Sunday at the Rosenthal JCC’s Fall Fest in Pleasantville. In West Nyack, enjoy Family Fun Day and help benefit the American Cancer Society.

Read on for our top weekend picks. If you see something interesting, click through to the event listing to view full details. Looking for more options? Be sure to check out our Event Calendar for more fun happening this weekend and beyond.

Boston certainly offers a plethora of family-friendly dining options around the city.  After writing about family-friendly dining in two very specific areas for Mommy Poppins, Charlestown and Fort Point I was asked, "What does Family-Friendly actually mean?".  I told them the answer was two-fold: 1.) No annoyed looks from the hostess, waiters, and patrons when you ask for a highchair and a kid's menu and 2.) The restaurant actually offers highchairs and kids' menus.  But I recently learned the term “family-friendly” can mean so much more.  Enter Aura’s Fine Dining Family Style concept, where you don’t have to give up your discerning palette OR eat at the speed of lighting to keep up with your constantly moving child. 

Aura takes the term “Family-Friendly Dining” to a whole new level, offering kids plenty of opportunities for fun. They provide movies, toys, crafts, and games -  with help from a representative from The Kid's Place in Needham.

Sorry, rest of LA, but the Westside is putting y'all to shame this weekend. The "there's-no-other-way-to-describe-it-besides awesome"  Glow returns to Santa Monica after a three year hiatus, with one-of-a-kind art installations that will blow your mind with the power of light and sound. But don't get too carried away because the next day is the Abbot Kinney Fest, the mile-long street fair and community festival that features a jam-packed KidsQuad, beer gardens for the over 21s, non-stop live music on two stages, local artisans, gourmet food, and approximately 150,000 of your friends and neighbors.

Sure, Hollywood is putting its money where your mouth is, with the Feast of San Gennaro, as Jimmy Kimmel leads the way to some fine Italian feasting and festivity-ing. Plus Disney Junior's Pirate & Princess Adventure makes its enchanted way to the Dolby Theatre, home of the Academy Awards. Are Jake and Sofia soon to find themselves some Oscar gold? Not if Hook gets to it first!

And then there's Moorpark's own Underwood Farms, ushering in autumn with its Fall Harvest Festival, arguably the most talked about pumpkin destination of the season. And Watts has the Day of the Drum, for some serious percussion action. Mustn't forget Costa Mesa's Orange County Children's Book Festival, only the largest children's book festival ...in the country.

Okay, okay, I guess there are some worthy activities to be found in all corners of the Southland this weekend. (Did I mention the garage sale being thrown by the entire city of Santa Monica?)

Keep reading for some of our favorite picks for the weekend, both on the Westside and elsewhere…

This is another one of those weekends when we wish we had the ability to clone ourselves: Three of our favorite FREE annual festivals are all happening at once. There's the super-interactive Dumbo Arts Festival, Brooklyn's largest street fair Atlantic Antic and Fort Tryon Park's Medieval Festival—and those are just our top picks.

Other FREE highlights include sneak peeks at Staten Island's in-progress Freshkills Park and Governors Island's redesigned parkland. Plus: no-cost admission to a host of NYC cultural institutions courtesy of Smithsonian Magazine's annual Museum Day and a big community block party in Battery Park City.

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 Fall Fun Guide.

Thinking back to my first fall in Boston as a college student, one of my favorite memories is of a day spent outdoors exploring Boston Common, the Public Garden, and the Esplanade for the very first time. It was a perfect day, culminating in a They Might Be Giants concert at the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade. That day, I fell madly in love. Not with my first college boyfriend (that was a couple of days later), but with the city of Boston in autumn.

Now I have kids in tow, and ironically, we would be just as likely to go to the Hatch Shell to see They Might Be Giants (since it's a band for kids now). And like that day a few (ahem) years ago, my idea of a perfect fall day in Boston means basking in the beauty of the city's great parks. Boston boasts other gorgeous green spaces like the Rose Kennedy Greenway and the Arnold Arboretum, but to me, there's nothing like strolling through the Public Garden and playing Frisbee on the Esplanade in the fall. Here are 20 of my favorite things to do on Boston Common, the Public Garden, and the Esplanade for a perfect fall day with kids in Beantown.