Fall Fiesta

Yesterday was the Fall Fiesta. The one big fund raiser that the high schoolers at AES do. Almost a service project in and of itself. It is a 4 hour undertaking which has just about every student in the high school hoping from booth to booth to work to provide a Halloween carnival for the lower and middle school students. For the price of one wristband, a child can play endlessly at any of the booths that have been set up with home grown games. Some of my favorites this year were the Whack-a-mole booth where students donned helmets, stuck their heads through some circles cut in a sheet and let the kids hammer their heads with an inflatable helmet, the face paint booth for the littlest kids is always a big hit, there was a hoola-hooping station this year, a paper plane flying booth, and not one but two angry birds throwing balls destruction games. There are a couple of things that are always present at Fall Fiesta: bouncy castles (I put in an hour of corralling kids there, but I'm only willing to work the first hour when it is the smallest children after that it is just volunteering for a head ache), the dunk tank by the swim team, the beat the keeper game by the soccer team, the haunted house put on by the theater program, and of course a raffle. I'm always kind of impressed with what our students are able to put together. It has a definite home made feel to it, but I kind of appreciate that. Most of all, though, I appreciate that I won't be asked for money every week during the school year to help fund a variety of activities our students are doing. No, part of putting this on, is that this provides all of the funding for the activities our students do - community service, athletics, theater, etc; no extra fund raising is allowed. Making this an activity our entire school can get behind.