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I started my day off bright and early making bacon for the carnival. I thought we needed some to go with the bagels. I was not the best at making bacon and had 3 pans going instead of using the oven. I splattered grease on my shirt and stained it too.
I used every inch of the car to get everything to the carnival. I don't even know if these pictures of the car were after everything was in.
I took a dolly to get stuff from the car to the table area. I had to make quite a few trips. I got there a little bit after some did who were setting up but I did have to make bacon in the morning and also I was quite pregnant!
We had volunteers for each thing in the program. I typed up instructions for every volunteer so that they knew what they'd have to do in advance. We sent out the instructions + had them printed with each game/activity. We brought so many plastic utensils and our mistake was not bringing a knife to cut the bagels. We managed but it took way longer without an actual good knife. Volunteers came to help set up and spent some time doing that. I kept trying to do 8 million things and would get distracted when someone asked what to do next then I'd put down what I was holding and doing and then couldn't find where later.
I had to go home and get Dave and Ella so we ended up missing Bean Bag Bowl Toss totally and also missing duck pond but the pond was still out. Dave and Ella weren't ready when I got there. It was a pretty quick drive but I was a little late leaving to get them since we weren't set up in time and then they weren't ready. Dave apparently didn't even know the official start time.
When I got back with Dave, we opened the bacon container. Apparently it hadn't been opened so nobody ate any. Then all the bacon was gone in 10 minutes. I guess I should have made more. I couldn't believe how fast it went yet I could. I burnt a couple pieces too and they were also gone! I was told we didn't even need bacon. There are so many vegetarians and people who don't eat pork but plenty of people do eat bacon. I typed up some lessons learned after the event and one was about having plenty of bacon. :)
We spent over 2 months planning the event. There were 4 of us that met to try to finalize things. Most of the planning was done the last week. We spent a lot of time on research on food choices but then it was just all too expensive. Or maybe I spent a lot of time early on doing that. When you set the cost out initially before figuring out food, it's a lot harder to have all the awesome options we were suggesting. It was too last minute for me but it was so hard to do it all in advance. We were making the photo booths the week of and getting all the signs printed the week of. Divya and Laura planned the music time/story time itinerary just days before the event. I made all the food labels the week of. I made matching hair ties for us to wear and we all wore red on purpose. Ella also had a ribbon hair tie to match us! So much of the planning was changing food or wanting different food but then food + decorations + prizes + game purchases were just too much so we needed cheap food. We charged per adult and kids were free but kids had to eat too so the $12 per adult had to last. We had a decent amount of food but no big meal foods like sandwiches. We stuck with bagels, fruit, yogurt, cheese and crackers, croissants, etc.
The week of the carnival I had to miss a planning meeting because my sciatica pain was so bad. That sucked. I hate to miss out. Also I noticed when we had meetings with 3 people then other meetings with 3 people someone was out of the loop and still working off of some old decisions. It's so hard to keep up!
We gave prizes after every game. All the kids had little popcorn bags labeled with their name to put their prizes in them as the day went on. I had counted and labeled prizes so each volunteer had enough for every kid to eat least get one. Then I put notes on the instruction sheets on what to put the leftover prizes with (a later game kit usually).
