The Day I Willingly Borrowed an Extra Kid

We had a pretty good weekend 'round these parts.  Henry had his last regular soccer game of the season. I'm not sorry to see this season end. It has been a pretty rotten one in my opinion.  I'm sad because the other two seasons we played, the parents were fun and friendly and I had a good time going to games and chatting with people.  This season, two of the parents in particular have been real jerks to Ken; and otherwise we've had about a 60% attendance rate at the games.  When there are only 6 kids on the team to begin with (and one of them has a broken arm) playing games with only three or four kids is hard.  They don't have the endurance to play that long without getting tired and cranky.

After the game, we headed home for a quick second and then headed back out again. My friend Julie was helping with the school carnival where she teaches and her sister was babysitting her two little ones.  We didn't go to our school carnival, so I thought "What the heck, let's go to this one!" I also thought it would be fun for Julie's daughter to get to go to the carnival too. L is 4 and would certainly enjoy something like that! He little brother is too young and I am not that crazy!

We drove out to Julie's house and picked up L.  I tried to leave Julie's subdivision and got lost twice! Apparently I navigate the place better in the dark.  We managed to make it to the school for the carnival and after working out a buddy system, we headed in.

First things first, we had to find Julie so L could say "hi."  Then we had some lunch and explored what was going on in the cafeteria.  The art teacher had drawn up a big mosaic mural on a piece of cardboard and the kids were helping to fill it in using different colored plastic lids. 

 The mural ended up being two snails and some flowers. You can sort of see one snail's head in the top right corner of the picture above.

They had some games in the cafeteria too.  One where you could pick a duck out of a pond and you got a prize based on the colored dot on the bottom of the duck.  The other game was a big sand box filled with plastic bugs. You could dig through the sand and pick out a bug to keep. 

 Outside they had a petting zoo set up with some chickens, a horse, a sheep, and a cow.  This girl told my kids that the rooster in this picture would start laying eggs soon!?!?  Frances was very confused by that statement!!

 As we walked around, I would occasionally call out "buddy check" and Henry and L would run to each other and hold hands. No matter what else I told him, Benjamin thought I was his buddy, so he ran to me and scowled at Frances every time.  She was fine with that and didn't get her feelings hurt. 

 Out on the blacktop they had a dunk tank and a bounce house set up.  Benjamin survived his first foray into a bounce house!  He fell down a lot, but it didn't seem to faze him.  The kids also enjoyed playing hopscotch while they were waiting for Frances to finish her turn in the bounce house.

 The highlight of the day (for Frances) was the pony cart ride.  I asked the kids if they wanted a turn, but they little ones all wanted to play on the playground.  So Frances went and stood in line by herself (I could still see her) for about 20 minutes to wait her turn for the pony ride.  We ended up heading over that way just before her turn and Henry was mad at me because I told him he couldn't have a turn. The line was outrageous and I knew there would be no way to keep a three year old, and four year old occupied for another half an hour waiting in line.

We had a really good time at the carnival and I'm glad we went.  L wouldn't have had a chance otherwise and she had a great time too.  In some ways, four kids was easier that three. I think mainly because Henry and Benjamin fight over me a lot, but I had told Henry that his job was to take care of L and he loved that job!

They were plenty worn out afterwards, but they still let me take a trip to Target to pick up some stuff for the summer.  We went home for leftovers and TV time and everyone was happy!