Boondocks

My work's summer party was as equally fun as Kirk's, partly because it was during a work day and partly because it wasn't too far of a drive for us. It was the perfect mix of food and activities, although Peppity-Pepster's favorite activity by far was putting the tickets in the ticket machine. Simples minds, simple pleasures and that sort of thing, I guess.

The bouncy house was great, too, until some fool let their children in with huge popsicles which immediately melted and spilled sticky gunk all over. Sorry, wee one, but you cannot jump in the orange-staining syrup that is quickly absorbing every foot disease known to childkind. So, with some public threats (and anything just shy of crawling through the offending puddles ourselves to retrieve our jumping bean of an offspring) we finally got our hopping child out just in the nick of time. Believe me, though, there were some close calls, and other children did not fare as well in the syrup mine field as our kid. Lucky for us, there was an abundance of distractions to move on to, like ridiculously tickling face painting.

Thank goodness for distractions, it's my main parental weapon of choice, so to speak. What's your best parenting trick?