Parish Carnival 2014

At long last, the parish carnival day has come and gone!

The day began bright and early with Chris buzzing over to church early to set up the BBQ booth while I took four kiddos to our violin lessons, which could have been a recipe for disaster except that I hired the teacher's daughter to be my mother's helper during lesson. We got to the carnival while it was still relatively early on a day that was going to warm up to 85 degrees.

Knowing I'd be taking the four children through all the rides by myself while Chris worked his volunteer shift at the BBQ booth, and knowing how overexcitement would likely cause them to run away from me in the crowd of hundreds, he and I put our heads together for a solution. The children had saved up Reward Bucks for months to earn their rides, games, and food. They would give us their Reward Bucks, in exchange we'd pay for the tickets. Voila. So, we sat down the kids and told them that if a child wandered away so much as to the next game over without permission, he or she would immediately lose one of his or her tickets. Fewer tickets = less fun.

Guess how many times the children wandered away during our three-and-a-half hours there? Zero! Daddies are good at coming up with effective consequences, while this mama is more 'adept' at using a loud, ineffectual voice.

She had more fun on the swings than her facial expression ever showed.

At noon, Chris was off shift so we ate our lunch . . .

 . . . before procuring some sweet treats!

You know you're a minor celebrity in Catholic parish life when yours is the only baked good listed by name at the Bake Sale. Mrs. K---'s beer bread is so popular, people actually rush to the annual bake sale each year to buy it. So now she bakes a lot of it for weeks in order to satisfy us all. Toasted with butter . . . mmmmmmm!

Minor celebrity

Refreshed and fueled by sugar, we set off to play some games.

The girls' face painting

The weather was unexpectedly gorgeous (if hot) for most of the day, with the predicted severe thunder storms blackening the sky and a torrent of rain not arriving until four o'clock. Not bad!

And tomorrow the countdown begins until next year's carnival . . .