Carnival!

No, not Carnival like in the Caribbean.  Carnivals happen all over, in spring, summer and fall.  They are sponsored by a school or a business and they have rides and games of chance, so much food,  showbags, live entertainment and lots of stuff to buy, like baked goods, artwork, used books and toys and clothes, homemade jams, and other Etsy-ish items.

The "big kid" rides area.  Mostly hell-no rides, but some fun inflatables too.

Showbags are plastic bags full of random stuff.  Sometimes they have themes, and sometimes carnivals or fairs have different price points for showbags.  At the Melbourne Festival they had showbags from $2 up to $50 each.  Some have food (often sweets) in them, others have toys, or some combination.  

Here's a link to a company that sells showbags, if you want to see the type of stuff in some.
Here's a hilarious blog entry about showbags that I found while looking for images of showbags.

I took the kids to the carnival at the school I am working at currently.  The carnival was to celebrate the school's 125th anniversary.   First, here's what the kids ate in a three hour time span:

1.  Sno-cones
2.  Devonshire tea (scones, clotted cream, jam, tea with an insane amount of sugar)
3.  Hot chips (fries)
4.  Souvlaki (for Isaac) and a fruit smoothie (for Ruth)

$35 later, I don't have to cook tonight. Money well spent.

Mmmm . . . Devonshire tea!

The street where they had all the food booths, about a half hour before it became insanely crowded.

Here's what they did in the three-hour time period:

1.  Ran through an inflatable obstacle course five times.
2.  Went down the giant slide six times.
3.  Entered a Lego build-the-tallest-house-in-60-seconds contest (Isaac went for style points instead - his house was only 17 cm.  Too bad there weren't style points awarded. )
4.  Continued to play Legos for another 45 minutes.
5.  Tossed gold coins at chocolate bars to try to win them.  $4 later, no wins but lots of girl-tears.

Here's what I did:

1.  Read the paper while they were playing Legos.
2.  Yelled at the kids to get moving in the obstacle course when they refused to come out.
3.  Yelled at the kids "Not headfirst!" down the giant slide.
4.  Paid for all the food.
5.  Said, "No you can not get your face painted," and "No you can not go on the Spinning Vomit Inducer ride."
6.  Sneaked into the faculty bathrooms because I only do porta-potties when desperate.
7.  Didn't eat because they ran out of paella (which Australians call "pa EL la" because no one speaks Spanish here)  I wanted to try it for research purposes to see if Aussies can cook Spanish food better than they do Mexican.  Alas, the study will have to wait.
8.  Chatted with colleagues and students.

It really was a terrific day, albeit an expensive one.  The weather was warm but not too sunny, the place was packed (which is great for the school), and it was fun to see my students outside of class and having fun.  A little strange to see my over-18 students waving at me from the beer garden though.