It's a Festival!

Last night we went to the parish festival at Nana's church. It was Inter- national Night in the school cafeteria in the basement of the church. Their interpretation of that term is fairly loose as we had bar-b-cued chicken and ribs along with the obligatory (for these parts) pirogi and kielbasa sausage.

There were exactly three "rides." Here's Janine and Sarah on the spinning teacups. The other two were an inflatable jumping surface and a portable funhouse that was not working. The sloppily dressed kid taking tickets in front of the ride said it was broken. I thought, "so why are you taking tickets and letting people on the ride?" But remembering that this is a fund-raiser, I shrugged my shoulders and walked off.

These festivals are all about raising money for the church and school using gambling -style games. Nana had the right idea. She went straight for the one-armed bandit and dropped five dollars in less than five minutes.

We gave the kids five dollars each and they had a great time. They gravitated toward the ball toss types of games, but the best was the balloon races. Two people pump up balloons at the same time. The first one to pop wins a prize. Sarah thought she would beat John, but he was sure and steady to win. Then Janine did the same. J and J both chose the inflatable hammers while Sarah was crushed to have lost to both her little brother and her little sister.