A day at the carnival

For our back to school party this year we had a carnival. The boys were surprised/interested to find out that it would be in our back yard. I came up with the games and activities in hopes that each of the boys would be able to have fun. Unfortunately, two of the boys had just played a good game of soccer- they both did awesome- but that meant they were tired and at times uncooperative, but there were still smiles from everyone at one time or another.

It started off with carnival treats. Kool-aid slushies and buttered popcorn.

After the treats the boys had a scavenger hunt. They had to pass off different school type challenges in order to receive their homework kits. I thought it was fun, but this was also the tired-cranky stage of the party.

The first event in the carnival, fill it up. Race from one end of the grass to the other to fill up a container one cup of water at a time.

Knock em' down. The boys enjoyed knocking those cups over.

The egg and spoon race. That was a little more challenging, especially if you did not have the "lucky" spoon. William found a way around this, by holding his egg on the spoon. Sneaky.

Which cup is it under. Challenging for the cup spinner but not so much for the astute kid.

The bean-bag toss. Caleb made this for one of his cub scout badges. It was fun for Caleb to make it and the boys seemed to enjoy playing it too. Oh, we also had an estimating game. I filled two containers; one with junior mints and one with chocolate kisses, and the boys had to guess how many were in each. They were all way off, but Caleb was close enough with 100 for the junior mints (there were actually 225) and Jonah guessed 40 for the kisses (there were actually 68). Rob would probably like to note that he was the closest one with his guesses but he was out of the running because he was the dad. When the carnival fun was done we headed to the "castle park" and ate dinner and played. Upon returning home the boys did this:

An impromptu pillow fight. They loved the freedom to pounce on each other, in a fun-loving way. There was the occasional hit that was too hard and Jonah stayed out of it all together. But it was fun to watch them romp on each other and have fun. These boys have such a great time with each other. Summer sure was fun, but I am sure we can make the school year just as great.