Pay no attention to that elephant behind the curtain

Sawyer's preschool had a carnival fun day Saturday to raise money. I wasn't sure what it would be like, and often the school's events are geared more toward the older kids, but I decided we'd go just to show our support.

It was not what I expected at all. First, it was indoors. The small room was filled with parents, teachers and kids running wild, so it was difficult to move around. There were a few moments that Sawyer was totally overwhelmed by all the noise and people and just wanted to be picked up.

It was very small ... like 10 games or so. The games were very cute, but they were the types of games that you really couldn't play over and over. And I felt bad going through a dozen times and winning "prizes" every time. So it didn't take us long to feel like we'd run through the whole lineup of activities. And some of the games were run by big kids, so they were not organized very well.

But Sawyer had fun, and the money went toward something good.

A few pictures and a couple funny stories from the day ...


Sawyer sat as stock-still while a teacher painted a baseball on his face. It never really dried so it was nearly rubbed off by the time we left.  



One of Sawyer's teachers, Mrs. Brumbeloe, was running the "Pick up ducks" booth.



Kids "won" a prize at each booth. They got to choose from foam stickers, junky jewelry and candy. Sawyer was clearly overwhelmed because he never once chose the candy.  



After picking up several "prizes," we finally made it to the station where kids could decorate a paper bag to carry all their goodies in.



One booth was "Pin the nose on a clown." They had a laminated clown picture with Velcro on the nose on the wall and a fuzzy red nose to stick on there. The girl in front of Sawyer was 4 or 5, and the teacher made her wear a blindfold. Sawyer studied her every move and when it was his turn, he wanted to wear it too. The teacher said little kids could go without it, and many would cry when they put it on. Not Sawyer. He wanted to wear it, and the teacher led him right up to the wall and helped guide him to put the nose on. We all cheered when he did it. The child is either incredibly trusting or incredibly fearless. Maybe both?



Sawyer wasn't sure what to do with this parachute at first. But he caught on quickly. Near the end, he had a meltdown because he just wanted to play with the balls and not let any other kids play.



The cutest booth, in my opinion, was "Feed the elephant." They had a puppet booth set up with curtains across the front, and a girl sat inside with an elephant trunk on her arm. The kids could "feed" plastic circus peanuts to the trunk.



Sawyer, being the nosy, figure-stuff-out kid that he is, watched this gray fleece trunk come out from the curtains for a minute before he politely walked around to the back of the booth and yanked open the curtain. By gosh, if there was an elephant in there, he wanted to see it. And if not, he wanted to know who was back there pretending to be one.