Autumn Festival

Bunny's school just had their very first Autumn Festival.  Traditionally, around this time of year, they do something called "Trunk Or Treating" where parents come and give out candy from the trunks of their cars as the kids trick or treat around the parking lot.  This year, they decided to shake things up and also move away from the Halloween business.

I want to clarify here, that I signed up to be one of two room mom's for Bunny's class.  Unfortunately, I am a complete failure at it so far, and only got logged into the room mom forums exactly ONE WEEK before the Autumn Festival.  This left me, and by proxy, all the parents in Bunny's class scrambling at the last minute to get enough volunteers to run our booth and donations for our booth.  More on our booth in a minute, but let me tell you.  This last week has been pretty hectic for me and for them, with a flurry of emails going out and plenty of fingers crossed for luck that we'd pull it off.

We didn't by the way.  Pull it off that is.  Thankfully, the school recognizes that Kinder Mom's (at least the ones who volunteer to be room mom's for our class and then fail miserably at it) aren't exactly on-board with school stuff yet and are still suffering separation anxiety from their babies which causes us to be a little more air-headed than most other Moms.  At least, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.  Where was I?  Sorry, I got a little off track.  Anyway, they had a bunch of older teenagers helping out with our booth so even though we were very short staffed, it still all went well!  HOORAY!

You all are my witness.  I vow to do better in the future in my room mom duties.  You can hold me to that.

Our booth?  We were the races booth.  We had wheel barrow races and potato sack races and last but not least, we had donut eating races.  What's that? You've never heard of a donut eating race?  It's this incredible event where the donuts are hung up on string about forehead high to each child, and then they race to see who can eat all of the donut first.  Let me clarify that these are "mini" donuts not full sized.  Still, it was mad-capped and crazy, messy and full of excitement.  And MAN, did those kids come running when they announced over the loud speakers that we were running that event.  In fact, I was surprised at how many kids came running for the wheel barrow and potato sack events.  I think that might be a sign that I'm old and cynical, when I can't see how much joy kids would get out of that sort of thing.  I'll work on that.

After my volunteer shift, I ran home to pick up Bug (who had been napping), Bunny and The Hubs and we all headed back for some fun time.  GG decided she was a bit old for an elementary school autumn festival, but I bet she would have had fun if she'd come with us.  Oh well.

The very first thing we did was hit the bouncy house.  Because really, who can resist a bouncy house?

Then we made The Hubs stand in a super long line for face painting while I took Bug and Bunny to get their hair painted.  Bunny chose pink stripes.  Bug got a green stripe down the middle of his head, with blue dots.  Happiness apparently, is blue dots.

 

Then Bunny and Bug created these mask masterpieces.  Seriously, I'm thinking of auctioning them with Sothersby.  They're that good don't you think?  Monet? Picasso? Anyone?

Then we checked in on The Hubs.  Yep, still in line.  So we went to the Bean Bag toss, where they both won a prize.  The Basket Ball Toss, where they both won a prize and finally the Ring an Apple toss where they both won a prize.  My kids are gifted.  Seriously gifted.

Finally it was our turn at the face painting.  Bunny got Hello Kitty on her cheek.  And Bug got a shark on his arm.

We finished off our afternoon of fun with a balloon each.  Not too shabby.  They had other things too.  A kid sized ferris wheel which we were unwilling to stand in line for as well as a rock-wall that also had a long line.  The Cotton Candy booth had the longest line.  We waited a bit too long to get a piece of pie, or the BBQ they had for food vendors.  We also missed the petting zoo which closed just after we arrived.  And we didn't want to wait to get our pictures taken in the school cut-outs, but otherwise, we pretty much hit it all.

I was excited to see so many families at this event.  I am not exaggerating when I say the place was packed.  I'm glad the kids and parents all had fun.  I'm glad that we got Bunny into a school that has so much parent involvement, and where the PTA has enough support that we can put on something like this.  I don't believe the school Bunny was zoned to go to, had anything like this or even does the trunk or treating.  It just makes such a difference in their education doesn't it?  Having such support of parents, faculty and staff?  We were lucky to get into this school.  I'm so glad we did.

Seriously.. Thoughts?