After church this morning, we took time away from turning the house upside down (we're trying to get organized - which for us means everything gets deeper before it gets better) to do some shopping for the upcoming kids' carnival.
Our neighborhood pool has several parties throughout the summer - Memorial Day and Fourth of July potlucks, fancy-themed adult party, teen party, kids' party and Labor Day potluck. It's one of the things I love about this neighborhood, and a big reason we chose to buy our house here. You really get to know your neighbors when you are pulled together all summer long, and make more and better friends than in a typical neighborhood (at least, based on all the other places we've lived).
Last year I served as "social chair" and thus had to coordinate and work all the parties. This year I respectfully declined the invitation to remain in that position, but did agree to handle the Fourth of July potluck and the kids' party, to ease the load on this year's social chair.
Last year the daycare kids helped me run the carnival, and they had a lot of fun with it, while reducing the amount of work it created for me. I'm hoping it will work the same way this year. We have some homemade carnival games the kids came up with last year, and a few new things that we've been able to plan for, since I've only had two parties to work on this summer.
Mark and Deedee set us up with the equipment and supplies we need to have a "raingutter regatta"; the kids will make boats from milk cartons and race them in rain gutters (Mark fixed two 6 ft. sections of raingutter so they will hold water). The local library usually holds an event like this each summer, and my kids all really enjoy it - it draws huge crowds. Unfortunately, the library was wiped out in the floods, so their events are canceled while they recover. The kids were disappointed about missing out on the regatta, so we decided to add it to our carnival. Lucky for us, Mark and Deedee had just the right connections to get us everything we needed!
Also new for this year (thanks to this morning's shopping trip): a miniature "claw machine" that uses plastic coins to operate.
We were fortunate to get the only one they had at our local "Tuesday Morning" - it cost about $10 less than others I've seen for sale, so it didn't break our budget. Harrison was excited to have an excuse to get a claw machine - and I'm hoping having it in our house will help reduce the number of times we have to say "sorry, no" when we pass claw machines in public!
The one drawback I've found to the claw machine is that it plays bright and chipper carnival music which becomes annoying rather quickly when played consistently for over 20 minutes:
DOOT doot doodle-oodle OOT doot OOdy,
DOOT doot doodle-oodle OOT doot OOdy
DOOT doodle oody DOOT doodle oody
DOOdle-oodle-OOdle-oodle-OOdle-oody OOT doot
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