September & October are busy months for my family. We have 4 birthdays in September & 1 wedding anniversary. In October we have 3 birthdays and 1 anniversary. Due to Covid, we have been denied our family Spring Break trip, our beach trip & our annual pilgrimages to the Maryland Renaissance Festival and Maryland Seafood Festival. Something has to give!
I’ve always felt like I live in a three ring circus. Don decided we would throw a big birthday bash in honor of my landmark ‘social security’ milestone & our Autumn birthday boys. We would host a family carnival!
Don was a masterful Ring Master & along with Eric concocted loads of carnival fun. You would be rewarded with tickets for successful completion of carnival games and prizes would be awarded at the end of the evening. All set to begin on Saturday, September 12th. Time’s a wasting so let’s get set up!
break balloon with dart 
toss football thru tire 
spin & eat disgustingly flavored jellybeans
The day dawned dreary but there was promise of some clearing in the afternoon. Determined to not let the rain dampen our spirits, we began with an indoor game of “Bean Boozled”. This is where you blindly select a jellybean to eat. The flavor may be a delicious one, like “chocolate pudding or a horrible one, like “canned dog food”. To collect a ticket you must chew and swallow your selected jellybean. If you’re lucky you pick “peach” instead of “puke”.
The rain fizzled down to a spritz and we donned bathing suits, rain slickers and headed outside to our next event. Here you had 3 chances to bust balloons with a dart. We played 3 rounds.
The years of degenerate bar dart league play that Don & I participated in at JP’s Pub in the Bronx payed off well for us. Next we moved onto the ring toss.
When you consider that Mike, Dan, Zachary, Damian, Steve & Don all played football expectations were high that they would shut us all down when it came to throwing a football through a moving target.
Steve played quarterback in his youth but his rustiness showed as Damian won by tossing 2 out of 4 through the tire! Natalie came in as a serious underdog but managed to get one through also. This took us to the axe throwing competition.
Pops getting it done
We were making fun of Steve for his unorthodox underhand throw while holding the axe blade instead of the handle but he had the last laugh as his blade thunked into the tree trunk. He spouted some science nonsense about weight and rotation blah, blah, blah.
Moving along to the bean bag toss allowed me to show off some of my skills acquired from playing corn hole at picnics, drive-ins, beaches and backyard barbecues. I racked up most of my tickets on this event.
Originally, Don proposed a bb gun shooting gallery but I protested that it would give Damian an unfair advantage as the kid can hit a garden digging squirrel right between the eyes at 200 paces (not that I condone that sort of thing – don’t send me any PETA letters.) Modifications were made for Nerf guns & cans. However many you knock off the table is how many tickets you score. Let’s just say the country dwelling Russos had it over those Reston & Raleigh city slickers.
Meanwhile, Don had been cooking up some serious carnival fare (get it, not ‘fair’ but ‘fare’ like in food. Oh forget it!) and the revelers were getting hungry.
It was time for the main event – the jousting competition! We selected numbers from a bowl to pair off. The first competition would be Steve vs Mike.
Our second match resulted in a forfeit as we had to physically restrain Kim. After knocking her youngest child off the podium so hard that he fell into the horse field, she hurdled the fence and continued to chase & beat him. (Anyone who knows Kim realizes that I am bold-faced lying here.)
The worst draw of the day was done by Natalie, who had to face off with Eric. Before Natalie ascended her podium, Eric goes into the crane stance from Karate Kid, leaps from his podium and does a front flip onto Natalie’s unoccupied podium sticking the landing (I gave it a 5.8). She smartly blindsided him in the back of the head while he was bowing for applause.
Once the scheduled matches for tickets were completed things quickly went downhill as we entered the open warfare ‘challenges’.
After a good long while of beating each other into submission the boys began using the arena for wrestling practice. Finally, when all were sufficiently exhausted we trudged back into the house for the ticket tally.
And the winner, with the most tickets for the day was:
First place prize went to Eric. We had filled envelopes numbered 1 – 10 with varying amounts of lottery scratch tickets with the most valuable ticket being for 1st place then decreasing in value down to 10th place. We then worked up from 10th place with scratching off our tickets to see if we won a prize. Kim was holding strong at $10 but in true winner take all fashion, Eric walked away with the big prize of the day – $27.00 (If truth be told, I felt like we were all winners because of the amazing memories we made this day together.)
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