One of the things I love about raising our kidlets in small-town suburbia are the community activities we take them too, like parades, concerts, craft shows and farmers markets.  I love it when summertime rolls around because carnival season is in full swing!   Look in your local paper and you can find a fireman, ambulance corps or church carnival just about every weekend from Memorial Day thru Labor Day.

When the carnival came to town….(photo credit: Westwood Patch)

When a banner went up in a neighboring town last week, my son knew exactly what that meant.  Though he’s not quite five years old, and is still learning how to read, he told me that it had the word “carnival” on it and excitedly asked if we could go.   I told him we would, but then had to explain to him that the carnival wouldn’t be coming to town for a few more days….talk about a delicate situation, it was as if I had told him we weren’t going!

Well the weekend finally rolled around and we went to the carnival.  We went right when it opened, which was pretty early, long before it started to get dark and all the teenagers would crawl out of the woodwork and take over.   The kidlets didn’t care, they were so excited taking it all in: the music, the rides, the games of chance, and of course all of the tasty treats.

Last summer whenever we would go to a carnival, my son got to go on all the rides while my daughter watched wistfully from her stroller, since she was just under the height requirements.   This year she’s finally tall enough to ride most of them.  They each were eager to jump on their favorite rides. My daughter went on a train and took a spin on the swing chairs.  My son went through an activity maze with a big slide at the end and a dinosaur spinner.  Both of them rode a motorcycle, each picking their favorite color “chopper” to ride.

They even played a game of chance….well, there wasn’t much “chance” to it, every child who played won a prize!  Each of my kidlets got a fishing pole and had to hook a plastic shark out of a kiddie pool.  Both were successful with my son opting for a Jabber Jaw-looking shark, which he named “Chomp” and my daughter went for a cute little dolphin which The Hubs and I convinced her to name “Flipper,” having a ready-made theme song did the trick.

I wish I could show you more photos of how much fun the kidlets had at the carnival (thank goodness for iPhones!), but much to our chargrin, our camera went kaput when we started to take pictures that night.  The best I can do is show you the kidlets and their “prizes” from the carnival.  Note to self, ALWAYS check camera for battery charge and photo card to make sure it’s not full or damaged before taking the kidlets anywhere fun.   But the sounds of their laughter and the looks of pure joy on their faces are ingrained in my memory forever…or at least until next weekend and the next carnival.

Now it’s your turn to share.  What is your favorite activity or ride when you go to a carnival or amusement park?

The Carnival Delight by The Harried Mom, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.