School Carnival

The girls school had their 14th Annual Spring Carnival yesterday. I know what you are thinking -- school carnival's are kind of hokey!! This school has the carnival down to a science. They charge $15.00 for a bracelet. This bracelet allows you to participate in all games. I bought the girls each a bracelet. We got to the carnival at 11 am (which is when it opened). They actually had a pretty decent carnival. They had 2 blow-up obstacle courses for little kids, a paddle boat lagoon (huge shallow pool with 4 boats to race in), 4 easy (easy, easy) games you play until you win (you get a prize no matter what!!), a blow up boxing rink with jumbo boxing gloves (the gloves were almost bigger than Alyssa - Alyssa and Amber could barely lift them), a blow up Q-tip battle rink (you know those sticks with cushions on both ends - they had to stand on these foam stands and hit each other off), a blow up bungie run race, a huge blow up slide, a blow up tweety cage (strictly a bouncing cage), and a monster size blow up obstacle course. They also had a cake walk, manicure station, face painting station, and (temporary) tatoo station and bingo.

The carnival ends at 5 pm and is followed by an auction. Let's just say that we were there from start to after finish. We stayed for the auction. It was my first auction. Some stuff went at bargain prices while others went ridiculously high. A teacher paid $190.00 for a reserved parking space up front next school year. They had a lot of great items in the auction. Each classroom had to enter something in the auction plus each grade level also entered a grade level item. Examples: Amber's class did an "Arts & Crafts basket" - it sold for $30.00, Alyssa's class had a white round table painted with "fingerprint bugs" on it and the name of each child with their bug - it sold for $75.00 (I stopped bidding at $45.00), a handcrafted oak porch swing - sold for $250.00 (the girls wanted that), a child-size wooden picnic table - sold for $75.00, a bookcase dollhouse (created by special ed class) - sold for $290.00 (the girls wanted it - I stopped bidding at $40 - it just wasn't worth more), the 3rd grade had a "desperate chocaholic's basket" this laundry basket held a ton of chocolate - sold for $40.00 (needless to say...Alyssa wanted this and she won it too - she bought it with her birthday money). We ended up leaving school around 8:15pm. I decided next year I am getting me a bracelet too, I can at least play some bingo and try to win a cake in the cake walk. (I got tired of just walking around for six hours while they played.)

Alyssa went through the chocolate basket that she "won" (bought) and picked out everything she didn't like (surprisingly she pulled out 2 walmart bags of chocolate stuff that she didn't like and still has a huge laundry basket full of chocolates. If I calculated about right, Alyssa paid $40.00 for about $65.00 in chocolates. I told Alyssa since she bought it she could decide what to do with the chocolates she didn't like -- she gave a (very, very, very) little to her grandparents and wants me to return to Walmart anything they will take. She will recoup some of her money that way. She is planning to share some of the chocolate with her sister (who is mildly allergic to chocolate) and her mom (who is also allergic to chocolate). We had fun at the carnival and learned that all school carnivals are not hokey...at least their auctions can be lots of fun. They had a professiona auctioneer - he actually won some stuff because no one wanted it. He was very fun to listen to.