Friday was a banner day for AJ. He spent the morning with dad as I had went up to the pool to teach. He spent the afternoon at a birthday party at the same place he�d had his birthday. In the evening, his aunt and one of his cousins came out to accompany us to our towns annual summer carnival. Or, as AJ still calls it, �The Carvinal.� It�s fairly unusual for him to reverse sounds like this these days, but no amount of correction seems to dissuade him from this one. And I have to admit that I really haven�t the heart to try.

The Carvinal is erected in the park where he usually plays T-ball. It is a HUGE one. There are probably at least 30 different rides, not to mention all the games. AJ played only one game, winning a stuffed fish for popping a balloon with a pointy dart on his first try. AJ and I first went for the giant slide he loved last year. We got a flour sack to sit on and hiked up the stairs into the sky. AJ sat on my lap and we descended with such dizzying speed, that we flew up in the air at the first bump and slid so far across the Astroturf at the bottom that we almost ran into the fence separating the enclosure from the next ride. After we put our eyes back in their sockets, I let his 13-year-old cousin take him on the next few rides � the twirling teacups, a tiny roller coaster, flying helicopters. He then spent the rest of his tickets on an elaborate obstacle course that included not one but two giant slides as well as several treacherous looking suspension bridges that made a very satisfying noise when pelted by the rapid footsteps of five-year-old boys in tennis shoes.

As we finished the last pass through the obstacle course, we headed over to the area where the big kid rides were to find AJ�s cousin and aunt who had gone to look for the Tilt-a-whirl. Alas, Their flip flops were deemed inappropriate for the Tilt-a-whirl and they headed up the ferris wheel instead. AJ�s aunt looked rather pale when she came down, so she watched AJ while I joined his cousin for a second ascent. The view of the town at sunset was lovely. We could see three hot air balloons from the top when we stopped there. Wait, one of those balloons is looking awfully close. Is it going to run into the ferris wheel?

It did not. Instead, it landed on the grass a few feet behind it. A crowd of kids with cotton candy and ice cream, teens tripping over their pants and sunburned couples holding hands rushed toward the balloon. We watched from above as they touched down, the occupants of the balloon�s basket waving vigorously. Then, as soon as they had stopped, they began ascending again, this time off over the baseball fields. We waved at the balloonists, now at our eye-level, as they literally drifted off into the sunset. The Ferris wheel creaked forward and we got out. It was time to go home.

After putting an excited but groggy AJ to bed, the rest of us watched a video tape of all three of our nieces dancing in their spring recital, which was it�s own kind of entertainment. They were wonderful, of course. But the dance recital is an cultural aesthetic experience unto itself. It defies description.

AJ is currently at another birthday party. I had planned to stay for this one to visit with a couple of people, but when I realized that there were something close to 50 children there, I high-tailed it out of there. I�m not THAT crazy.

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