April Ended On A "Carnival-Themed" Note (Plus Some Other Stuff)

Besides the county fair, our family had a lot going on at the end of April. It left me pretty drained, to the point where I'm just now getting over it all. There were a lot of other "carnival-themed" activities that closed out the month...it was an interesting trend that spanned the entire week! Thankfully, most of the activities were either helpful to others or fulfilling in some other way.

Here's a brief rundown:

Tuesday: Besides the usual business (school, preschool, piano lessons), I volunteered in Lorelai's class, right after buying tickets to the school's "carnival" that was to take place that Saturday. Volunteering in Lorelai's class always wears me out, for reasons I'll describe in more detail later; suffice it to say, there are a lot of rowdy, rude kids, and it gives me a headache.

After lessons were done and dinner was eaten, I headed out to my monthly book club meeting. This month, I was in charge of leading the discussion, which meant a little more prep time than usual (usually, I show up, eat a bunch of food, gossip with my friends, and leave!). The book I selected for the month of April was Call Of The Mild, by Lily Raff McCaulou. I picked it up on a whim at the library one day, after seeing it on the shelf...it has proved to be one of my better impulse picks in recent memory! It's a memoir that tells the story of how the author (an animal-loving, gun-hating political progressive from New York) becomes immersed in the world of hunting. She details her gun safety training, then slowly moves from practice shooting to dove shooting to bird hunting to big-game hunting. The "climax" of the story is when she shoots a massive elk and has to field-dress it...not for the squeamish! It's a fascinating look at modern hunting and how it fits in with America's current political and conservationist landscape. More than that, it's a perceptive look at guns and gun ownership, American dietary habits, and how we view death in modern society. It's also very readable and relatable...I highly recommend it!

Wednesday: This was my "off" day (thankfully...I needed one off-day this week!). It mostly involved me lying around gathering my strength. Well, in the morning I did run two miles...and took the kids to storytime at the library. So, not a total off-day. Nathan also got some new expansion pieces for our favorite board game, Seven Wonders. We invited a few friends over to give the new expansion components a "test drive." I love Seven Wonders (it's one of my favorite board games of all time, probably!), but I admit I got my behind kicked that night. Time to play some more practice rounds!!

Thursday: This was one of my crazier days. Driving the kids to school, exercise group, preschool, a frantic trip to CostCo (where I bought a whole bunch of food...more on that in a second), babysitting, and four piano lessons. Eek! Usually I don't do more than three piano lessons in a day, and those days are exhausting. But four?? I will try to avoid that in the future.

But that's not all! As soon as my final lesson was done, I piled the kids up in the car and we headed over to the church building, where we had to set up the Primary room for our annual Teacher Training meeting.

It's not often that Primary teachers get to meet in a kid-free environment, to discuss the nature of our jobs and how we can do them better. By offering a Teacher Training, the Primary presidency is hoping to accomplish just that! True, the Sunday School presidency often offers a Teacher Improvement class during church...but given the number of Primary classes we have, getting all our teachers to that class is a near-impossibility.

Anyway, we provided child-care and dinner to sweeten the deal for all our teachers, some of whom may have balked at coming on a weeknight. Mmmm...delicious chicken-salad croissants!

In the end, we had a handful of teachers show up, along with several teachers from the Young Women's organization. We handed out several forms prepared for us by the Stake Primary Presidency, including spiritual and temporal responsibilities as Primary teachers, and some tips on how to deal with disruptive children.

As you can guess, dealing with rowdy children was a big part of the discussion, as was the appropriateness of bringing food to classes. For the record: I am against treats in class, except when the lesson suggests them or on otherwise rare occasions. I worry that treats create a "reward culture" in Primary, where the kids come to expect them weekly. It can also make a mess of the church building (crumbs everywhere, etc.), and can make siblings jealous of each other, thus chasing away whatever spirit they had been feeling.

Obviously, I am not a "final authority" on these things, but as Primary President, I have tried hard to limit the treats in class (I don't know how successful I've been, but I've tried!!). However, we had an instructive conversation with some of the teachers who don't agree with my stance, and hopefully worked out a few compromises that will help some of the more wiggly children. I was very tired after all was said and done, but I was happy for the good discussions we had, and grateful for the spirit of the Lord helping me discuss a potentially difficult subject with respect and understanding. Hopefully next year's Teacher Training will have even more attendees!

Friday: Another "off day"--if by "off day," you mean "spend the whole morning cleaning the house." I also managed to take a quick trip to the grocery store to buy a cake for the school carnival the next day. Nathan was supposed to have a game night that night, but came home tired and slightly sick so he hung around home all night, while I furiously whipped the house into respectability. To be honest, our whole family had spent most of the week with a Pima County Fair hangover, and more was to come the next day! Lying low at home (well, aside from all the cleaning... and the laundry!) was a form of self-preservation at that point. That leads us to...

Saturday: Another long day, with not one, not two, but three carnival-themed activities! We started it bright and early, arriving at Great Expectations Academy at seven-thirty in the morning to help set up all the carnival games, booths, and what-not. Nathan and I don't volunteer much of our time at the school, so we thought of this as our "karma" for the year. After carrying a few wooden games to various points on school grounds, I helped prepare Lorelai's homeroom for the "cake walk" fundraiser...

I even laminated the numbers! Yes, I know...such an overachiever. The treats all looked delicious (we had donated a couple of them ourselves), but we knew the chances of winning them were not great.

After some of the heavy lifting was done, Nathan went home to shower and get the girls ready for the actual carnival. I stayed behind, to meet up with them later; I had some final set-up to do, as well as a quick detour for some grocery shopping before the carnival began. Plus, I had also volunteered to monitor one of the inflatable obstacle courses for the carnival:

It was a pretty impressive set-up, all things considered!

When Nathan and the girls showed up, they proceeded to have a blast. They tried out the cake-walk (but didn't win anything, of course); played every carnival game available; jumped on every bouncy castle many times over; and, of course, ate a bunch of kettle corn and cotton candy. You know, to get them in the "carnival" mood...

After a couple of hours, we took our leave. It was a fun trip for the kids, and a well-put-together event for the school! Unfortunately, it was a busy weekend, and as a result, a lot of families weren't able to make it to the carnival. The attendance was probably a bit lower than the event organizers would have liked. Hopefully, the school was able to turn a profit and get some significant funds for the upcoming school year.

After the carnival, it was time to quickly get ready for my next activity...a bridal shower for my friend Deidre's (soon-to-be) sister-in-law. It was really fun to go to a bridal shower; it was the first time in a long time I've been to one! I've been to countless baby showers over the last several years; those are wonderful, of course, but it's just as fun to offer presents to a beautiful bride-to-be just starting her adventure as a wife! Plus, the humor can be a little raunchier, and no one minds!!

The bridal shower was "carnival-themed" as well; there were delicious lollipops, popcorn boxes, corn dogs, and plenty of taffy. We also had a prize drawing, and guess who was the lucky winner? Yeah...this guy!!!

I loved the cute ceramic "bathtub" everything came in...and I am still saving that lovely giant lollipop for a special occasion. It was a great conclusion to a fun afternoon.

But my day wasn't over yet! I had to transport a salad to a church function...a barbecue held for the entire stake. A new pavilion had been constructed behind our old church building, and this dinner was the stake's way of celebrating. It consisted of hot dogs, salad, punch, and a shady place to eat (I was very thankful for the shade...by this point the day had gotten quite hot!). And for the kids, there were--you guessed it--more carnival games!!

Our ward was in charge of face painting. I asked a sister from our ward to volunteer, and she stayed for the first hour of the (four-hour!) event. Another woman took over after that; I saw lots of flower-faced girls happily running around as a result. There was also a "cake walk" at this barbecue...one with a much higher success rate than the school's cake walk. Celeste stayed at this event for a long time (darn the lack of parental supervision!), and ate no less than six cupcakes! Yes...totally obscene, yet hilarious too.

There were other typical carnival games as well (ring tosses, water balloons, etc). But the biggest draw was the rocket launcher!!

Each kid was responsible for making his or her own rocket out of the available construction paper. They then placed the rocket on a "launcher" made of PVC pipe, and powered by air pressure generated by a simple bicycle pump. Ah, science made easy and fun!

Some of these rockets really flew...a handful probably got close to 100 feet in the air! Lorelai's rocket...did not fly that high. It also flew kind of crooked. Blame me, who helped her make it and who has no engineerig know-how whatsoever. However, we both had lots of fun making the rocket, and lots of fun at the carnival!

And thus one of my busiest weeks in recent memory came to an end. May is usually my "busy" month; if this week was any indication, I fear for my sanity in the coming weeks! Of course, I could be blowing it all out of proportion as I am wont to do. Time will tell!