^{Posted by: CallMeMama}

Last Friday night was the annual Halloween Boo Bash at the Cheese's school.  Unfortunately, the Golfer had to be out of town that night.  So that meant that I would be navigating the Boo Bash with a blue Clone Trooper and a Dragon...all by myself.

We got there when it started to try to avoid the crowds and the chaos.  Over 900 kids attend the Cheese's school.  Add in the adults and siblings and you are talking about one huge bash!

When we got there, it was obvious that all of the other kindergarten parents had had the same thought.  There were a few older siblings, but for the most part it was younger kids.  We bought our tickets and hurried in line for our first game: The Lollipop Pull.

You've got to love the simplicity of the games at school carnivals.  Take the Lollipop Pull for example.  On a table sits a large pyramid with Dum Dum suckers stuck all over it.  One ticket lets you pull out a sucker.  If the end of your sucker stick had a red dot on it, you got a prize.  If not, well then you just got to keep the sucker.  A win-win.  No tears.  No losers.  Everybody walks away happy.  An especially practical game for my 2-year-old who wasn't going to walk away without one of those lollipops.

The Monkey's favorite game was the ever-popular Cake Walk.  I remember this from my school carnivals.  It must be some unwritten law that school carnivals have to have a Cake Walk.  If for some bizarre reason you never participated in a Cake Walk, this game is even easier than the Lollipop Pull.  There are numbers taped to floor in a circle.  You walk around the circle until the music stops, stopping on a number.  Then someone pulls a number from a hat and if it's the number that you are standing on then you win a cake. 

The Cheese's school is obviously taking childhood obesity very seriously.  They were only handing out Halloween cupcakes to the winner.  But for my 2-year-old this was the greatest prize ever!  Poor kid tried three times to win one of those darn cupcakes.  He still be there trying if I hadn't made him stop.  We finally just went over to the student council bake sale and bought one for 50 cents.

For an hour and a half we played and played.  There was Tic-Tac-Toe, the Spider Ring Toss, the Pumpkin Bean Bag Toss, and the Duck Pond where you had to toss a ring around a rubber ducky in a small, inflatable kiddy pool.  Lots and lots of games that involved tossing and throwing. 

Were there lots of winners?  Yes, because the PTA parents had made the games easy enough for the kids to have success.  My boys won Halloween yo-yos, small jars of bubbles, pencils, plastic spider rings, and all other sorts of junk that will eventually find their way to the trash within the next day or two.  But the most important thing was that my boys enjoyed themselves.  The Cheese saw his teacher and principals all dressed up and enjoying the games and activities with their own families.  The boys enjoyed some time at the craft table making a spider and a treat bag.  They both got pretend Halloween tattoos and neither one of them was willing to walk through the haunted house.  

By the time we left it was getting dark and almost as if planned, families with older kids were starting to arrive.  My boys sat with smiles in the back seat as we drove through McDonald's to finish off our perfect evening.  Waiting for our Happy Meals, it dawned on me that I had survived the Boo Bash without an ounce of frustration or irritation--a true feat for any wild and crazy event that includes costumes and candy. 

Now I just have to get through Trick-or-Treat on Wednesday.  Thank goodness the Golfer will be back in town.