Marshmallow Drop!

A cool thing that our County park system does is the annual Marshmallow Drop. Done in a park quite near us, we've never actually gone before. As Good Friday's weather was predicted to be in the 80's and there was not a cloud in the sky, it seemed like a good idea to go check it out.

We had to park about 1/2 mile away due to the large crowds. The newspaper later reported that there were over 10,000 people at the event-it felt like 100,000! The crowds were enormous and I was glad we'd brought Bryce in his stroller. They had roped off the drop site and the crowds were pushing at the ropes. They were doing 3 drops, each drop for a different age group.






















Bryce had a total meltdown about 10 minutes before the 1st drop-which was for kids ages 4 & under. He was kicking and screaming and drawing a lot of attention. The helicopter flew in, dropped 20,000 marshmallows in a cloud of flour (to make them spread out instead of clump) and the mad dash to grab marshmallows began. The problem was that each child only needed ONE marshmallow to claim a prize-and many families/children were gathering them up by the bucketfull.

With Bryce still crying, we went back to our spot & waited for drop #2. Brendan was taking Brett out in the melee. The helicopter approached, they mad a dash out into the craziness, and didn't return for a long time. They both came back upset. Brendan, because he really doesn't like unruly crowds, and Brett, because "It's like all the parents are encouraging the kids to take more than one marshmallow!". Bryce was still screaming.

I declared Marshmallow Drop a "fail" and we headed for the car. Bryce FINALLY stopped crying, the kids were FINALLY happy and we didn't even stand in line with the 10,000 people to get our prize. We stopped & got a pizza for lunch instead. We can cross this one off the "list" and not have to ever do it again!