Sharp and pointy

At the Medieval Fair two weekends ago, George looked around and said, "Everyone should have to come in costume." This was apparently the final push I needed to get us to a Society for Creative Anachronism event, which we had talked about doing every year after Med Fair but had never quite followed through on.

There was an event the following weekend. Unfortunately Dean had a conflict on Saturday, but we went yesterday for the archery tournament. We really didn't know what to expect. As it turned out, there was also a "thrown weapons" tournament in which anyone could participate.

So we did.













It was a three part event -- you threw knives, axes, and spears, and your cumulative total determined the final standing. Dean threw all three parts before I thought to get out the camera. George threw all three weapons. I threw knives only. Charlotte threw knives and spears; we decided she was too small for the axe, to the relief of the marshal who was clearly preparing to tell us so if we weren't bright enough to figure it out on our own. Dean and I were quite impressed with their carefulness and concern for safety.


You know an event was successful if the kids want to recreate it at home. George went out to the garage after finishing his homework and scrounged up some flagpoles to serve as spears; he and I used a hula hoop as a target circle just as they did at the event. That was so much fun that he built a bow out of a broom handle, bungee cord, and duct tape. Amazingly, it shoots. We had a tournament after dinner, complete with a marshal (George) telling us when it was safe to retrieve our weapons and when we were free to shoot.








(Can you see the arrow striking Charlotte's shield?)

We'll be heading out to the archery / thrown weapons practice next Sunday.

George's 9th birthday!

George turned 9 on Saturday. As always, I am shocked by how fast time passes, remember him as a tiny baby, yada yada yada --- but this year, all of that was overshadowed by his party: our first slumber party. He has been planning this for months, ever since he went to his friend's birthday sleepover. It would be a military party, they would sleep upstairs ... the details just kept coalescing.

I couldn't think of any reason to say no, so I said yes, but the whole prospect seemed daunting. We had never had any of his friends spend more than about four hours with us. What would it be like having them for 16? I hadn't realized that a group of kids would keep themselves busy quite easily. The whole party was more fun and less work than I had expected. Tiring, though! Next time we are going to have a "quiet down" time when they have to watch a movie or do something else calm rather than just rampaging around until midnight.

We weren't quite ready when the guests started arriving, but that was no problem and in fact meant that George's friends could help him decorate the cake:


D-day cake, finished -- note the man who has jumped over the side of the Higgins boat:


Here you can see more of the German defenses:


Turns out it's very easy to get frosting out of Legos (actually I knew this already) but if you jam a guy down into the cake, you will need a toothpick to get the cavities inside his legs clean.


Much of the afternoon was spent preparing for and then conducting an assault on a well-defended pillbox. Here are the troops in a lull before combat:



The enemy appears:



General George rolls away from the grenade:



Here they are tending to a wounded comrade:

Being wounded was apparently very appealing. I had laid in a supply of gauze bandages & pads which was exhausted in no time.

Eventually they captured the lone defender:



They were pretty bloodthirsty & most appeared never to have heard of the Geneva Convention.

This assault was so successful that they repeated it several times, until pizza was ready. The evening rolled on, and on, and on, with a regular alternation of war games, Lego building, and snacks. We finally told them they had to go to bed at midnight (too late); they were up again about 6:30 (too early).

We had two real casualties -- one boy cut his foot running around outside barefoot in the dark, and I managed to splash hot bacon grease on my foot. Fortunately I only got first degree burns; it could have been much, much worse. My Birks actually took the brunt of it, so only the part of my toes that were exposed got burned (left foot):

The front porch is covered in grease stains -- I was taking a pan of burning bacon outside so it wouldn't stink up the house -- but better the porch than me.

After the party guests left, we cleaned up and chilled out for a while, then opened family presents. George got some very detailed books about military planes from one set of grandparents:


and a magic set from the other:


We gave him a metal detector:


and are paying both him and Charlotte a nickel for every nail they find in the yard or gardens. I'm not surprised that they are turning up plenty despite my contractor's assurances that he had "taken care of that."

Charlotte's present was apparently hard to open:


but very cool:



And now it's time to go!

What a find! What a project!

Look what I bought at the flea market this morning:



It's a giant slab of wood -- 51" x 44" x 3" thick. It has been used as a coffee table with this lovely base:



It is in rough shape. There were some pieces of paper stuck to the top -- were they decoupaged? Glued? Who knows -- they were partially ripped off. Then there was a piece of green fuzzy paper, like you use for model train layouts, and another bit of fuzzier brown, and some gunk with a lot of dog hair stuck in it -- very scuzzy. I started wiping it with water & Murphy's Oil Soap, just to get the yuck off, and then tried to scrape the old paper off. The big clumpy bits of finish started coming off, too. You can see where some of that is left:



This is what the "plain" parts (no obvious additional materials stuck on) look like:


Is this just old varnish?


It's kind of stripey:




Can I use a heat gun to take it off? I had thought I would just clean it up a little and then we could use it as is until I had time to really work on it, but I don't think I can stop now, it's just too weird looking. And still kind of grody. But I think I've reached the limit of what Murphy's Oil Soap can do for me.