A fish tale

When I was a youngster, a yearly family tradition was to go to the St. Mary's carnival. It's a tradition that has continued with my family. And thankfully, it is one of the very few things that has not changed since my childhood. There is still the silent auction, the raffle, the white elephant, and the halls are still decorated with large drawings of cartoon characters. Each year there are some new games, but you can still find shuffle board, the duck pond and fishing for a prize. And of course, you can still win a goldfish. We were never allowed to even play for a chance to win a goldfish. We begged, pleaded and whined I'm sure, but my parents never gave in. I never came home from the carnival with a goldfish. I don't think I ever forgave my parents for that until I became a parent myself. Now it is my turn each year to tell my kids that "no, you can't play the goldfish game." We have never come home with a goldfish. That is until this year. I made the mistake of letting Fred take the boys to games, while I took Cordelia to the easier games. Later, when we took a break for some cotton candy and pizza, Rion couldn't wait to tell me that he had won a goldfish. I apparently forgot to warn the husband about the no goldfish policy. Rion was very excited about it so I forgave Fred. Rion named his goldfish "Goldie". St. Mary's goldfish have a reputation for not living very long. Goldie lasted about three days. And since we had the tank all set up and the kids liked Goldie, Fred went out and bought two new fish. This time he got two mollies. One of these mollies is black and gold so Torii named it "Steeler". About two days later we learned Steeler is a girl. Now we have about ten fish swimming around. One prize fish has resulted in ten. The kids are never ever playing the goldfish game again. And I'll make sure to warn Fred next year.

Wordless Wednesday

A late Christmas story

I know I'm way behind in my blogging and I wanted to post this before Christmas. Well, I'm finally getting around to it.

In mid-December my office had a Christmas party. It's held during the same week that we have our winter meetings since everyone is in town at that time. Since this was my first year attending the meetings it was on my mind a lot and therefore, a lot of others things got neglected. One of those things was helping the kids with homework. Rion and I usually practice spelling words on Wednesday night as his test is on Thursday. On Friday morning of that week as we are about to leave for school, Rion tells me, "You know my spelling test was yesterday. My spelling homework is also late now too." I apologized to him for not practicing with him and told him I had a lot on my mind with work and it would not happen again. Rion looked straight at me and said, "Well, you need to tell your boss that you have kids."

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Over the weekend Rion was bugging me to help him with something, I can't even remember what it was now. I told him to hang on a minute so I could finish what I was doing, then I would help him. "Mom you take forever," Rion said, "It's like waiting for a website to load."