Saturday, September 6, 2008

The Carnival of all back yard Carnivals!

My oh my, I'm looking at pictures of Laila with a frenzied smile on her face wielding a bat and beating the crap out of a pinata at her Carnival. The party is over and I'm exhausted, but it was great fun for anyone under my armpit level.

Laila has been planning this Carnival of Carnivals since February. She had huge plans involving a limo and ferris wheels and parades at one point, and then eventually settled for one hour of fun in our backyard. Yeah. She talked about this Carnival constantly and made signs to hang up around town, coaxed her brothers into printing invites from the computer a number of different times this summer, and cut up reams of papers into small little ticket pieces. We kept scheduling it and then rescheduling it. Laila had to have popcorn and cotton candy for sure, and lots of kids. Laila eventually wrote up a contract for all of "the brothers" and me and Wayne to sign to make sure we wouldn't try and weasle out of it again. We were stuck. Today was the day. All of our planning came into fruition and at the magic hour of 4:00 we had guests galore come into our backyard carnival. It really was fun to watch. Good thing I had lots of help with the brothers, Lindsey, Emilee and Laura B. and Kimi F. Yeah for good friends.

We had different stations to play games at...a ton of fresh popped theatre popcorn, and a cotton candy machine. Wayne had sugar clear up past his elbows as he twirled stick after stick of pink cotton candy. Wayne also gets the award for being super dad of the decade. He let all of the kids throw wet sponges in his face and he performed his Craig the Peg-- the three legged man routine All of the kids were stupified. I also put Wayne in charge of the popcorn machine so I wouldn't be tempted.

I set this all up and tell you all of this so you will understand my eating of this day.

Theatre popcorn, which I love, was right in my back yard!!! So was cotton candy but I'm not a real big fan of melting sugar in my mouth, so I wasn't really tempted by this. Back to the popcorn....oh my word. I've been known to eat an entire tub of popcorn all by myself and then get a refill. Actually I would start out sharing the tub with my friend Kimi, but I knew she would have about 15 kernals and I would get the rest. Fresh popped Theatre Popcorn!!! I knew it would be a difficult afternoon, but I started out with good intentions. I put a stick of gum in my mouth so I wouldn't be tempted. That didn't last very long. Soon I had a gum and popcorn mixture rolling around in my mouth. So much for the gum. Then I limited myself to one baby bag of popcorn. I'll just have one, but one turned into 2, 3, 4, you get the idea. Soon, I was kicking Wayne out of his making popcorn job and I took over. This way I could get the really hot ones. As the guests were leaving I was waving good bye and shoving popcorn in my mouth.

We have popcorn all over the back yard;on the tramp, all over the grass and deck. I can't even let the dog in the back yard for fear she'll eat it and throw up.

My stomach actually hurts. Wayne made us get some "real" food at about 8:00 tonight. Chicken, Shrimp and veggies. I wasn't even hungry , but I thought about all of the popcorn I had eaten and decided I needed something healthy in my body.

The Carnival of Carnivals is over. I wonder if I will ever get over my obsession of freshly popped theatre popcorn. Maybe next years carnival we can have cotton candy and sugar free popsicles. I would do okay with this menu.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

We ALL want to share popcorn with Kimi. Wonder why?? Yesterday at the UTE game, we bought popcorn, and it was AWFUL. If only I had been invited to Laila's carnival. :(

Allison Paige Blake said...

You missed out Si. It was seriously a party. And no this isn't Ali. I don't know how to set my own account up. I know, I know, I'll get on that. It really was the carnival of all yard carnivals.ERIN