Medieval Times and a Medieval Birthday To Come

While we were in Texas last month, we took the opportunity to add a little field trip to our school year by visiting Medieval Times in Dallas.  We've been studying history chronologically - and if you ask me there is no other way to study history-and this year we've been going through Medieval Times.  Both kids had a blast watching the show and eating with their hands.  Mia was impressed with just about everything there and it was fun to see her recognizing certain aspects of the time period that were being showcased that we had studied.  At one point, just before the show started, everyone was sort of milling about browsing in the gift shop area and Mia noticed a group of kids in costume.  They were most likely home school kids.  One of them was wearing a Cleopatra costume and Mia whispered to me, "Why is she wearing a Cleopatra costume?  That was like, a thousand years before this."  That's a proud moment at a home school mom. When your kid knows more about a subject than most adults in the room.  Ahhh.  It feels good.

 The castle

 Papa and Nana came with us

 Some kind of Medieval torture chair.  It didn't look very comfortable

 Mia was very impressed with the King's Royal Falconer.  

 We were in the Kingdom of Navarro and rooted for the yellow knight.  Sadly, he was defeated and died at some point during the show.

 All the knights showing off their heraldry from the back

Mia was made to eat with her fingers.  She should have lived a thousand years ago.  

Mia is enjoying studying this time period so much that she had decided to have another history themed birthday party.  She really is combining a long time love of hers - fairies - with history and having a Medieval/fairy/King Arthur/Lord of the Rings-ish party.  The food should be easy enough.  And, Granmommy is going to be in town for the party this year, which hasn't happened in a couple of years so we are all excited to have her here for another party.

A Lovely, Lovely Day

This whole day was one of those days when you wake up and the birds are chirping and everything goes according to plan.  Shelby let me sleep in a bit while he made the kids breakfast and when I got up around 8 they happily threw their clothes on and went to play in the backyard/woods for an hour or so together.  Around 9:30 Mia headed to Vermont for the weekend with our wonderful downstairs neighbor (aunt) for some foodie love.  They had plans to eat at several amazing sounding local eateries as well as do plenty of walking around and some shopping of course.

Lennon and I were not going to miss an opportunity to have a fun day together!  After they left I took him out to a local bakery where I let him pick out anything he wanted.  He's been mostly gluten free for a couple of months, but for today we decided to throw caution to the wind.  He chose a delicious looking cinnamon roll with pecans and icing all over it.  When I handed it to him he looked up at me with the most humongous smile ever and said, "I feel like I'm in a book right now.  Because books are usually really exciting and right now I am just so happy!"  I think I made the right first move to get our mommy/son day off to a good start.  We enjoyed our treats - his cinnamon roll and my iced coffee - together in the sunshine just outside the bakery.

After that we dropped by the house to pick up Mateus and Bianca and then went straight to Home Depot for project day.  The kids were all very excited to be making double planters as we've been doing a lot of planting around here lately and had needed some more pots.  The planters came with stickers advertising the new movie, Epic that is due out at the end of May.  We were all equally excited about that!  After completing our projects we got some bird seed and soil and headed home.

At home, Lennon wanted to put together his Professor Bombar binoculars that were a little extra at project day.  We had fun making them and even more fun looking through them and pretending to see little tiny fairy people!

Daddy came home for lunch, as usual, but Lennon was too busy playing Mine Craft with Mateus to pay either of us much attention at that time.  After lunch Claire, all the kids, and I loaded up into the car and went to the zoo.  The zoo was great as usual.  The kids spent a lot of time today at the Dino Dig area.  While we were at the zoo Jessica called us and we all decided to have a little impromptu dinner date.  Shelby and Walderi had a wrap up event for a project they've been working on for Buffalo Wild Wings to attend together tonight, so Claire and I were flying solo for dinner as it was.

Lennon has been wanting to go out to eat sushi so badly, so I decided tonight would be the night.  We drove over to Jessica's house and walked to a great little mom and pop sushi place right down the street from her house.  All in all there were six kids and three adults.  The kids all behaved so well!  Lennon loved eating sushi.  I think he tried just about a little bit of everything.  We even tried red bean ice cream at the end of the meal.  It was pretty good!

Back at home we read a little, snuggled and he fell right to sleep.  I'm sad a little bit every day knowing that his days of snuggly tininess are quickly dwindling.  Say what you will, but I still lay down with him every night at bedtime.  He's just so precious and sweet laying there with his sweet, blonde hair swept across his forehead.  Soon he'll be big and old and he won't care about anything I say.  Today was perfect!

A funny little side note:  Lennon calls toquitos Kentucky Sandwiches.

If it wasn't for this itchy poison ivy rash all over my body, I would have absolutely no complaints about the entire day!