Crapade

Photo Album Moments. Sweet and serene picture of the two older kids, isn’t it? Photo-album worthy as it is, I am learning that my reality is not all precious gerber baby snapshots. We love that part in the movie “Just Married” where the Dad tells Ashton Kutcher’s character that life is not made up of only those moments captured by pictures in a photo album. The Dad tells the young, angry newlywed that there is a lot of struggle that goes on in between all those photo album moments. That there are hard, ordinary, disappointing days, and that sometimes you just have to survive those to get to your next “photo album moment.” And that that’s just reality, just life. In essence, the father was saying that it’s not all black and white pictures of kids in Easter clothes kissing each other sweetly (like above). What follows is one such moment in our reality–a day in between the photo album pictures.

The Local Fair. Trips or events with three young children have, at best, a 50/50 chance of success. Several weeks ago, we felt lucky. We wanted to play the odds. I had seen a convincing advertisement in the newspaper about a local fair that was in Colorado Springs. We geared the kids up for our “big event” of the weekend. I got up early and packed the snacks for the trip, and the changes of clothes, and the cds for the car, and the extra diapers, and the stroller, and the wipes. As our kids got up that morning, on a Saturday, at like 6 am, it wasn’t hard for us to be literally the second car there at the fair at 10 am. Aunt Cassie came with us, anxious to “seize the day” of her Colorado experience. Spirits were high. There was a Monster Truck demolition derby and a petting zoo and rides galore. This was going to be a good day. A “photo album” day, I ventured to believe as we got out of the car after the 40 minute drive.

After swallowing the admission fee of $8 a person (which for a family of five is like 40 tickets to the dollar theater to watch a movie), we had our hands stamped and received the schedule for the day. The Monster truck race wasn’t until 1 pm and the circus didn’t start until 2 pm. Hmm . . . . it was 10 am currently, we weren’t feeling lucky enough to mess with naptimes. Trying to hold loosely to the idea that we would even get to see the demolition derby, we decided to opt for a ride or two . . . all of which were $4 or $5 dollars each. Hmmm . . . . two kids, one two-minute ride, $10 bucks. We thought it best not to even begin to go down that road with the kids’ expectations, and instead opted for the ONLY FREE activity offered: the petting zoo. Our hopes were high, as the petting zoo was advertised to have “over 100 animals”. I’m thinking giraffes and monkeys. Instead, there were 98 different kinds of goats, one sheep, and some kind of ram that you weren’t allowed to touch (I’m exaggerating a bit, but not much). And, of course, it was another $3 for little paper cups of food to feed all the varying-sized goats. Not wanting to be total scrooges, we opted for the goat food cups. That lasted about 6 minutes.

By this point it was maybe 10:20, the events were still 3 hours away, everyone was getting hungry, and we were about out of money. As the three adults were trying to stall and think of something “fun” to do, Kelty (my five-year-old) slides on the gravel and totally busts on the dirt right outside of the goat farm/petting zoo. Scraped knees and elbows. Sobs. “I hate this place!” quite loudly (though still the only other people there were the fair employees). Good times. So, I am lugging the still-crying five-year-old on my hip, the three-year-old is whining because he really wants to ride the train that’s out of our budget, and the baby is starting to fuss because she’s hungry. And we’ve PAID $50 to go through this 28-minute experience which had left us bleeding and goat-slobbery.

Matt is pushing the double stroller, loaded with all of our kid gear (oh, and a crying baby) up the hill back to the parking lot. I opted for the Pollyanna approach and forced a cheerful, “Well, babe, when you get lemons, ya just gotta make lemonade, right?” And he fires back, “Yeah, but what do you make when you get crap?”

Hmmmm . . . . Crapade?

Needless to say, we didn’t take any pictures of that day.

“Reality is like fine wine; it doesn’t appeal to small children.” –Donald Miller