MavsFest

Tonight was "MavsFest" at Eric's school, short for the Mavericks, which is their school mascot. It used to be called "Carnival", but I guess they wanted a more exciting name. Natalie has been saying all week that she wanted to go. Her friends were going also, so she would get to spend time with them plus see old teachers and such. Alex decided to go too. He has refused in the past, but Natalie must have convinced him to go this year.

While we were there, Alex saw his fourth grade teacher, Ms. R. She was amazed at how tall he was. She was almost a head taller than him when he finished fourth grade, almost six years ago. I would show an old photo here, but my photo organizers aren't being cooperative right now.

One of the activities at MavsFest was a "Jail". Basically, if you give a ticket to one of the people manning the jail, you can put one of your friends in the jail. Most people go willingly, but some do not. You stay in the jail until someone else pays another ticket to get you out, or you're in the jail for a designated period of time.

One of the things Natalie was chatting about to Alex yesterday, when she was trying to convince him to go to MavsFest was that she was afraid that her friends would put her in jail and then there would be no one to get her out. She asked Alex to come with us so that if that happened, he could get her out.

This picture is of Natalie with the handcuff on her wrist, at the tail end of saying, "Mama, NO!" She was, of course, saying "no" to having her picture taken. Her friend Ally is holding the other end of it. I'm not sure why she was outside the jail with the handcuff on, but I never saw her in the jail--maybe they had jail overcrowding. Someone else must have gotten her out, because when we went back for her, she had disappeared and her friend Ally was trying to force someone else to go to jail.

Here's a closeup of Natalie's wrist with the handcuff on. I told her that I would just take a picture of her hand and she was good with that. It's just that when I realized that the other picture above was actually in focus and not blurred, I decided to show that photo too. Also, I thought that she looked really pretty in that photo, with her hair half up and half down. She had let me do her hair in the morning, with a simple braid in the back. She wouldn't let me do anything more elaborate.

Natalie was having enough fun that we let her stay at the school an extra half hour or so after we left, then Patrick went back to pick her up. Her back has been sore this week, so at least she was able to end the week enjoying time with friends.

Eric had a blast, of course. He got really sweaty jumping in a couple of the bouncy houses they had set up. It rained for most of today, so they set all of this up inside the school instead of outside where they usually have it. That made it more crowded, and I would hate to see what the cleanup was like, but at least we could enjoy the activities and not worry about getting wet.

After the last bouncy house, Eric wanted to get some shaved ice from one of the food trucks that were there--grape and blue raspberry flavors mixed together. He liked it so much that he wanted another one later on, when we were leaving, but the line was too long.

After enjoying the shaved ice, he decided he wanted to play outside in the playground. Great--an indoor carnival and my son wants to play outside. By then, the rain had slowed down to a light drizzle. He kept running back and forth between the two playscapes they have at their school. At one point, he was playing tag with a friend. When we were tired of following him around, it was time to go.

Eric wanted to do one more thing before leaving--he wanted to be in jail too. He was in there only long enough for me to take this picture, then he was ready to get out of jail. I'm not sure why the kids loved the jail so much, but there were certainly a lot of kids going in and out of there.

Tomorrow, Eric gets to do a four hour First Communion orientation thing with Patrick. I'm so lucky that Patrick isn't making me go with him (or instead of him). Instead, I get to drive Alex to his friend Jeremy's house, so he can go with Jeremy and his family to Austin for the day. It's supposed to be raining, but hopefully it won't dampen his day. I have to work all day and night on Sunday, so it was great that I got to spend a little time with the family today.