Fish Fest

This was our big excitement last night. Every year our school has a Fun Fest fundraising event, with face painting, games, raffles and other activities. But this one event was the big draw for my girls. For the second year in a row, they were going to have fish racing. There are 4 little goldfish, each in a lane, and 4 kids stand at the edge of the table and try and coax their fish to the finish line first. Lauren was very disappointed not to win last year, and vowed that she would have a new technique for this year.

So away we went to Fun Fest. We camped out on the hill to eat our pizza dinner, and Lauren pondered her strategy...clapping loudly versus flicking the water with her fingers. She made her decision, squared her shoulders and away she went to stand in line for her turn. She did a combination of water flicking/loud clapping, but unfortunately didn't win that round. We wandered around for a bit and she spun the big wheel (winning a pencil), and eventually Lauren decided to give it another shot. She found standing in line to be more nerve wracking this time, particularly as two of her friends were also in line to play again, even though they'd each already won a fish. I should add that I didn't score any brownie points with the parents of these girls when I suggested that perhaps as they'd already won a fish, they shouldn't play anymore. I got a scowl from one of the dads, and then they pointedly ignored me.

Back to the race. Emma had been waiting her turn in line while Lauren and I were off doing some other things, and it was now her turn. She hollered and clapped for all she was worth, and her fish came scooting down the lane to win first place. She was thrilled, to say the least. Lauren was somewhat consoled, because she was quite sure that Emma would share her fish, if worst came to worst. Emma assured her that she would indeed share Speedy with her, and then away she went, hugging her bag (poor fish). Lauren's turn came, and she clapped and hollered and flicked water to great success. Her fish tied with Lane 4 for first place! As the fish lady was putting Lauren's prize in the bag, she muttered to Darren "Good luck feeding and flushing these!".

So now we have 2 fish. The girls were all about getting a fishbowl and some toys for the fish, and of course a big can of fish food. However, Darren and I are spoilsports and said that we had a big glass bowl at home that they could go in, and we'd worry about fish food in the morning. We figured we'd wait and see if these suckers were going to live through the night before we did anything. Do you know that I was awake at 1:30 this morning, worrying about these stupid fish? I lay there wondering if the cat had gotten at them after we went to bed, and trying to imagine the girls' faces in the morning when they saw the carnage. So of course i had to go down and take a look at them. They seemed fine, except for maybe being a little rotted off that i flicked the light on them.

Two minutes out of bed this morning, Emma asked Darren whether he'd fed the fish yet. She noted that they had not pooped yet, probably because they had not eaten and were VERY hungry. So the fish got a breakfast of chopped up cucumber, which they seemed to enjoy quite a bit, and Emma reported happily that one of them had in fact pooped. Well thank goodness. Now I can get on with my day.