I moved here a little too late last year and missed the annual company picnic. But as a member of the photography club, I had seen how fun it was via all the pictures. So when the calendar invite rolled around this year, I was pretty psyched to go and take the kiddos.
Well, mostly psyched to take Thomas, Henry probably could care less about picnics. As you may recall, Thomas has already been to the work Halloween and Christmas parties and seemed to enjoy both. I expected that this one would be even more exciting because it was outside in nice weather and he's old enough to know what is going on around him.
Our first stop of the day was the petting zoo. As we were walking up I realized that all the animals he reads about and I grew up with - he's not really been around at all. Crazy to think my kiddo has touched a goat in his life. I had great plans on remedying that. Until it became obvious Thomas was just fine outside the fence, thank you very much...
After watching the other kids pet animals for awhile and a few false starts into the pen, I finally managed to get him inside. Where he stared at everything but wouldn't touch. I showed him how to pet the ducks and the sheep. "No, I'm good. Thanks."
I finally managed to get him to touch a few animals. This picture is deceiving in the sense that he had his hand on that goat for less than half a second. Good thing I had a fast shutter speed! Even though he wasn't super into touching the animals, he still enjoyed hanging out with them and telling me what noises they made. :)
Then we decided to get a balloon animal before the crowds got too long. And we *just* beat the rush. They also had a cray hair (he almost got colored hair, but decided he wasn't interested at the last minute) and face painting booths, but the balloons seemed like the best choice.
The guys were quite good and very fast for as complicated creatures as they were making. They had all kids of characters from Frozen to Iron Man and more. I was tempted to get him an Olaf or Sven from Frozen since he is addicted to the soundtrack, but was worried he may not recognize them in balloon form. But there was one he was guaranteed to recognize no matter how slight the resemblance:
Elmo! It's not a bad Elmo for being made out of balloons and he certainly knew who it was.
In Texas they probably have bull riding at picnics like this. In Alaska, we apparently have salmon riding- ha! The kids that were brave enough to try it seemed to be having quite a blast with it - you can just see the head of the kid who flew off as I was taking a picture. We decided it wasn't for us.
Instead, Thomas wanted to go down the inflatable slide of doom. It wasn't called that, but after trying to carry a toddler up an inflatable slide that was super steep with ridiculous hard to balance on steps, I named it that. Not to mention I lost some skin of my elbow on the way down. Of course, Thomas immediately started saying "More? More?" when we got down.
"Uh... no way. How about we get some food instead?"
You can see that the food wasn't nearly as exciting as the slide was. But he did manage to eat almost the entire bag of chips. A little bit of junk food every now and then can't hurt the guy...
Unfortunately, balloon Elmo and sharp blades of grass don't mix. We started to lose Elmo, section by section. Soon all that was left was his face and arms. Thomas still carried him around for quite a while until he "disappeared" into the nearest trash can. Momma got tired of chasing balloon pieces every time the wind gusted - which was often...
Next to the petting zoo was a little spot where kids could hold bunnies and feed them. I figured Thomas wasn't going to be up for that, so didn't bother going over there. But when I was chatting with some coworkers I noticed that Matt had decided to let him give the bunny petting a go. So of course, I had to go see how that worked out. Notice he isn't too sure about this furry thing in his lap.
But he warmed up to the bunny and even tried to feed him some lettuce. There was one toddler there that was laughed hysterically at the bunny in his lap - which made all of the adults laugh. Thomas was more reserved, but we did at least get a few smiles out of him.
High on the success at the bunnies, we decided to let him try the pony rides. There were full size horses for the big kids and one teeny tiny pony for the little kids. And helmets, of course! Matt got Thomas on the pony and suddenly my kid was frozen in position half leaned over in the saddle. His whole first walk around the pen he didn't move a muscle.
The second round he seemed to loosen up enough that Matt let him go and he didn't freak out. Still didn't move much, but the death grip on the saddle loosened up a little. ;)
Done with the pony ride!
Overall, the picnic was a great time and I'm so glad work does fun stuff like this for families. The food was good, there was a band playing music and enough activities to keep even the young kiddos entertained. Maybe in a few years we'll be up for salmon riding, rock climbing and baseball throwing, but until then we will take fun in whatever form Thomas decides. As long as he's happy, we are too. :)