Graden Carnival.

For the grand finale of our month of fun & laughter we had planned to do a carnival.  I was so excited about bringing to life some games and activities that I had enjoyed while attending the Rock Canyon Elementary annual carnival as a kid.  Beforehand I worked on making signs and gathering items for the different "booths".  Most of the supplies we had on hand, were upcycled or I found at a garage sale.  I did purchase a roll of raffle tickets from Target, figuring that we'd get good use out of them.  The last week of August we could all earn tickets by facing hard situations and choosing to be happy.  It was neat to walk Alex through some of his normal frustrations and help him see that he could choose a more positive outcome than just melting down.  Ironically I learned the same thing for myself ;0)

Unfortunately the day of the carnival was the day that my morning sickness hit (aka all day sickness.  why does it have to be called morning sickness?!).  We had been planning on this all month so I pushed through and with some help from Dad, we pulled it off.  I'm so glad we did.  You kids loved it all and I loved watching you enjoy yourselves with the simple games and prizes.

Usually at a carnival you win tickets and cash those in for prizes, but we spent the tickets to play games and won points.  We each had a little wrist band where we tallied our points.  At the end we could "cash them in" for prizes.

The games included:

Kick the Can (throwing bean bags to knock down cans)

Candy Walk (like a cake walk except that you could win candy instead of a cake)

Leap Pad (throwing different size frogs onto different size lilli pads)

Silver Rings (tossing bean bags through rings)

Go Fish (fishing for a prize)

Rubber Ducky (randomly selecting a rubber ducky and getting the prize associated with the color on the bottom of the duck)

1-2-3 (tossing bean bags into different sizes of bowls)

We also did a little photo booth, Dad juggled, we had popcorn, did a nacho bar, and made homemade root beer & funnel cakes for dessert.  Good thing we don't normally eat like that ;0)

The thought of the chili and cheese nachos still makes me want to hurl, but it was a great afternoon.  Let's hope next time I pull out the carnival bin first trimester nausea and food aversions won't come with it!!