Ward Party

A couple of weeks ago the Young Women and Young Men in our ward put on a carnival style party.  They did an excellent job, but the evening ended up being a bit of an adventure for our family.

We got there and started eating dinner, fairly uneventful and then all of a sudden something bugged Miriam and she fell screaming to the floor.  Brian tried to soothe her for a while but she would not have it, so after about 10 minutes we decided that her teeth were bugging her (that usually accounts for her unexplained screaming), and Brian went to the drug store to get some medicine.  I took her and tried to settle her down, but after a couple of minutes I realized that she wasn't going to.  Joshua had finished eating and I told him he could walk around as long as he stayed in the church.  A nice sister in my ward came over and offered to help and I asked to keep and eye on Minna so I could take Miriam outside.

I took Miriam outside where she continued screaming (she would keep this up until we would leave an hour later).  Then the sister came out and asked me if I had seen Minna.  I guess she had to go somewhere and when she came back Minna was gone.  I was probably the least concerned because I figured Joshua had came and took her with him.  The Young Men and Young Women had some games going on and I thought that they had gone over there.  Well Joshua had gone and gotten Minna, but they were not familiar with the part of the church where the games were, so they went over and played with toys in the nursery.  It was good thinking on their part, but it added some more stress.

Brian came back and medicated and took the still screaming Miriam, and I took our kids to the games.  We first stopped and got their faces painted.  Joshua was painted as Iron Man and Minna was painted as Spider Girl, but she came out looking just like Darth Maul. 

Then I needed to take a turn helping with one of the games.  Since Brian was outside with Miriam I had to ditch the big kids with the first person I saw, which was my friend who has 4 little girls of her own, one of who was 6 weeks old at the time.  After I was at my game for about 15 minutes Brian decided nothing was working with Miriam and we would just have to go home.  Fortunately my game basically could run itself, and the inside games were about over anyway.  Joshua and Minna were devastated to leave the rest of the games.  Now that they had found them, they wanted to play. 

Brian pacified them by having them do the cake walk until they won two cupcakes.  Fortunately there was hardly anyone playing and they won quickly.  Miriam settled down as soon as we left and the kids enjoyed their painted faces for the night.