Chicken Blog

Party Knights and Father's Day

The fun lasted 6 hours. We made memories for a lifetime. Alex's 13th birthday celebration was a day full of great friends, play and laughter, lots of food and a castle cake. What an event. See this crowd? This is a fun bunch of people. Let's add enthusiastic, generous, loving, energetic, and really cool. They came ready to participate in the whole medieval scene. Holly brought her ample store of crowns and weapons. Gene and Carol were in full Renaissance garb, and they looked spectacular. Everyone found a way to play, like playing softball, launching foam tipped arrows, constructing knights and dragons to populate the castle and even tossing around some water balloons.


Alex's king of the castle was soon joined by his loyal subjects each drawn and assembled by friends and family. We made good use of tin cans, glue and glitter.


Max helped set up the kingdom, complete with its secret stash of castle treasure; the dungeon was full of chocolates and poppers!


Here is the catapult Geoff and Alex designed and constructed last week. It worked awesomely... really, it was launching hundreds of orbs and never once failed or caused injury. I think we could rent it out for corporate events and unconventional weddings.


All able bodied knights and ladies were welcome to operate the catapult. Objective: Take down the castle! Michelle made the first significant hit! Rich penetrated the castle gate.


Here's Nick checkin out the damage. Once we were satisfied that the king was willing to surrender we sent the children charging forth to plunder the contents. The castle went down. Its mighty curtain wall and formidable tower were shredded and the treasure was hauled away by the triumphant warriors.


Some of the castle loot included wrapped surprises for a game of gift stealing. Is there an official name for the stealing game? We each had a chance to pick a gift from the pile, and gifts could be lost to the next player. In the end everyone takes home something, like a kite, lotion, a bike horn, Altoids, a tape measure... good, good stuff. Tough choices.


Rich and Jeff, negotiating a swap?


Geoff worked hard setting up and then cleaning up, but in between he got to sit back and relax, take in a facial from these two lovely ladies.


Last night Alex laid his gifts out end to end and basked in their gloriousness. He was thrilled with all the fresh art supplies (which regularly run-out in this house) from Meera, Dhyana, Michelle. He invited Max to join him when he excavates medieval treasures from the gift that Rob gave him. He has new books to read, and some cool shirts to wear, thanks to Rachel, Tamsyn, Jeff, and Nick. Mitchell, Enrico, Naomi, Sydney and Chris gave him gift cards, so did Adam and Jacob... more fun to come! He has new Lego sets to construct thanks to James and Deanne, and Hans and Gretchen. There are lots of cool things we look forward to playing with, like the moon phases light and the new cake form. Wow! Wow... very generous.


Isn't it fun to watch someone open gifts? It's a little bit of magic. Pulling back the paper and revealing a secret, the reflection of someone's thoughtfulness. Alex wants to use his new paints and charcoals to make thank you cards for everyone.

Happy Father's Day
After a very busy week and a long day of reveling, I think we are all going to enjoy this quieter day. I made thick, cinnamon French toast and turkey bacon. Geoff watched a new SpongeBob DVD with the kids. I suppose we'll be cleaning some, and we plan on taking a long walk. We have some calls to make too. But mostly we are going to enjoy a calm, less hectic time together. It feels good to have time to reflect on how great life can be.