Carnival

As parents, I think typical ones, we dread when the carnival comes to town. From where we live it is impossible to avoid the children seeing it as we are coming or going from our house. It is similar to the Golden Arches (McDonalds), children can spot them miles away when they are merely a blur of color and lights.

In our town the carnival comes twice a year. Thankfully no more. I am not against children having fun. I am against the uncleanliness of the rides, fear for the safety of them, dislike the outrageous $1.50 per ride fee, and most of all the fact that carnivals are not family friendly atmospheres like they used to be. With all that being said we still torture ourselves once and sometimes twice a year to allow the kids to ride them.

We happened to pick the day they were doing a buy one get free on the ride-all-you-want arm bands. That was a nice surprise! So we got the bands and were ready to go.

The girls like different rides, all three of them, so that posed our first challenge. We decided to let them each pick one ride and they could take turns watching each other ride. That succeeded in making us walk around like a chicken without a head. We started at one end on an older child ride and then ended up at the complete opposite end when the next child chose theirs, only to go back to the other end for the third child. The girls were having a great time. All but one. Our two year old chose the carousel for her first ride. She gets on with daddy proudly holding her in place on the high horse. And the ride starts. It's going good. And then all of the sudden the ride kicks in to turbo speed, something similar to a mach speed. Her eyes get huge and I can see the fear as she speeds past me in circles every few seconds. Like most moms I am trying to counter act her fear by waving huge and yelling things like, "Wow look at you go" and "Wave to momma". She gets off the ride and she was done. That was a $17.00 ride. The cost of a band and she rode one ride. There wasn't anything that would convince her to try that again.

The other two rode ride after ride and had a great time. We stayed for a couple of hours and then decided to call it a day. We sanitized them well, buckled them into the truck, and we were done with the carnival until next time.

A couple of things I learned. Have a master plan before going on how to allow each child their rides of choice while maintaining a certain amount of tread on your shoes. Watch the speed of the horses before you purchase a band for the little ones. Oh and one bottle of hand sanitizer just isn't enough to help make you feel like your children are clean!

I can't wait until next time! (read that with the utmost sarcasm!)