Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

So a few weeks ago we attended the 2nd annual Fort Wayne Cherry Blossom Festival. It was a celebration of Japanese culture. There was Taiko drumming (which Ava was all about after they visited her school the few days before the festival), sumi-e demonstrations, bonsai exhibits, free admission to the art museum where there was a manga drawing contest and where they had a reasonable amount of Japanese art (nothing as good as my Yoshi, tho!). There was also a origami exhibit with regular sized specimens and some really big ones too-dinosaur origami! Aaaarrrgh! So fun. But my favorite part was a Haiku competition for the wee ones. I love haiku and find myself composing it often when stressed out or in ridiculous situations to calm myself down. So of course, the kids were going to enter. Ava had just learned about haiku a couple of weeks before at school, so she was super excited. Of course, not to be left out, James wanted to do one too. Earlier in the day, bored with the Taiko drums (???) he and PJ had set out to do some exploring around Friemann Square. They found an expired duck and a plastic toy soldier. The soldiers gun was so big James decided it must be from outer space, so he referred to his new favorite toy as his Spaceman. This spaceman was the source of some gnashing of teeth earlier when it came out of James' pocket and yours truly had to go find him. Thankfully, I did, and not much later we went inside and partook of some haiku. I do not remember Ava's, however, James' was this:

Steve is my monkey
Spaceman is in my pocket
I love mac and cheese

The gentleman at the table accepting submissions was over the moon with this haiku. It is really lovely, as far as I am concerned, too. We left not thinking much beyond "That was so fun!"
Fast forward a few weeks and in the mailbox we find a letter stating James had won the contest! There was a reward certificate, the original haiku entry, a blue ribbon, and $20!
Everyone was pretty stoked. When asked what he was going to do with the winnings, James told me that I was going to take him to Target today so he could get a Nerf gun. I just hope he doesn't want one as big as Spaceman's!