Kiddie Carnival at Oakbrook Terrace's Heritage Center.

Every year the Heritage Center at the OakBrook Terrace Park District hosts a Kiddie Carnival. We weren't able to make it last year, but this year the kids and I, along with my friend M and her kids, went to this free event.

It was hot and crowded when we arrived. Parking was almost nonexistent; I had to park behind by friend's car. The thing that bothered us the most was all the day camp kids.They'd rush towards a ride and there'd be thirty kids in line.  There were a few bouncy rides, but the lines to go on them were long. So, we checked out some of the carnival games first.

There were a few cute games like hitting a hockey puck through an opening and digging through the sand for buried gold coins, but even these games had long lines. My friend's son kept running to the front of the line and wanted his turn NOW! It was hard to keep him still and with needing to feed her newborn, it wasn't a very fun time for M. 

We sat at a picnic table and ate together, very quickly though because the kids really wanted to go on the bounce ride.

After going down this slide, my poor friend had to drag her crying son to the car so they could head home. Poor guy! He really wanted to stay longer, but you could tell he was getting overtired.

After they left we cashed in our tickets for some bouncy balls and waited in line for Jared to go down the huge slide. Alexa decided it was a bit too high for her (even though she's gone down slides like this many times before), so we watched Jared together.

Probably the best time we had all day was when we played the water balloon war game. Jared was absolutely fascinated with this game. I was hot and wanted to go home, but he seemed really excited about this. The rules of the game are as follows: Two teams face each other about twenty feet apart. Each team loads their water balloon on a sling shot and shoots it towards a hole under which the other team stand. If you make it through the hole, your water balloon should break open and soak the other team. We didn't' do so great at getting our balloons to go where we wanted them too, but we didn't get wet either. All in all, it wasn't bad for a free event. I could have done without standing so long in lines in the hot sun, though!