Montclair Spring Carnival

I am amazed.

Ever since Andy and I have had kids we've lived in fairly poor and uninvolved school districts. 

Hawaii?  Mississippi? Yep.

Virginia?  No way. 

I know there are poor areas, but education is a pretty big deal out here.

The schools have sports that we've never heard of, fundraisers galore, and activities every. single. weekend.

Such as...

Family Fun Night, where you bring your boardgames to the school library and play with other families from the school!  All right!

I'm not mocking.  Seriously, I'm pretty impressed.  I think it's a great idea to get the families so involved with their kids and the school. 

In a hypothetical kind of way...  Usually I'm more interested in putting my kids to bed.

But every weekend our kids come home from school with fliers about the latest happenings at school, begging to go.  And most of the time I'm just not that interested.  I know, bad mom...

Well, recently we've tried to indulge the kids a little bit.  A couple of weeks ago we went to Family Fitness Night (teach the WHOLE family about the importance of being physically fit!) 

And it was fun.  The kids were happy.

This past weekend the school held a carnival.

And for a fundraiser, put on solely by the PTCO, it was AMAZING!

They presold tickets and wristbands, had food and an icecream truck, pony rides, bouncy houses, home-made carnival games in every single classroom, crafts, an auction and brought in local vendors to sell their own goods.   Holy moly.

Well we pre-bought our wristbands and walked on down the street to the school last Saturday.

Shockingly, Lillian tripped and fell on the concrete while walking past the ponies in front, scraping up her knee pretty badly, but we perservered.  The injury only cast a pall on the first hour we were there...

But was removed from her mind with face-painting.

A wonder for kids; an absolute terror for mothers.  At least for this mother.

Sweet Ashton.  She's a girl after my own heart and chose something nice and simple.

Cayden, of course, chose an animal face.  But he hated the whole process and washed it off the minute he got home.  It was too itchy...

Ah, Lillian the Princess.  She was a pro, and acted like she was at a spa, completely relaxed, getting a facial or something.

I then went and took my turn volunteering for an hour at a game, and Andy took the kids to ride the ponies.

Look at how tiny Ashton's pony was!

And of course no day at a carnival is complete without a trip to the bouncy houses...

And then the Cake Walk (or Cookie Walk, in this case).

This was the only activity that Mason could really participate in.  She loved walking around in her own circles in between all the kids, wreaking havoc on their orderly progression.

We played some games and ate some food in between all the other fun, coming home with sacks full of prizes.

And Cayden and Ashton proved themselves to be quite adept at limbo. 

Or at least slithering on the their backs and mopping up the floor under the bar.

Silly kids.

So we had enough fun at the Carnival that maybe we should check out some of the school's other offerings.

I hear Family Technology Night (play computer games with your family at the school!) is coming up...