Carnival with the Kids

On Friday, we attended our first Collister Carnival at the kid's elementary school. The children upheld the fine family tradition of winning a cake on the cake walk--got one in the first go 'round, in fact. This practice dates back to my sister and I cleaning up at cake walks during our early years.

My daughter won and was looking at a variety of cakes with sprinkles and gummy worms adorning them. I made it clear that her actual choices consisted of one of the chocolate cakes on display or the German chocolate brownies. When she tried to argue, I explained that (a) she could always do the cake walk again, but when you've got one cake on the line, you always go for chocolate first; and (b) if she got any other kind of cake, she would be carrying it around for the rest of the Carnival, because I wasn't going to take it back to the car for her.

We got chocolate. You have to teach these principles early.

The Carnival was fun overall. We know more parents now, so there were other adults to talk to, including a couple who also attended the University of Texas. And a group of kids who know me from volunteering gang-tackled me and dragged me off to a jail where I had to be ransomed. Then they tried to do it again, but we were out of tickets to redeem me because my daughter had lost one of the passes we bought. This leg to the spectacle of me carrying two elementary school boys and dragging several others because I couldn't afford the bail. My back is mostly recovered.