What-What?! Week of June 9th

It lives!

I am still alive -- just been busy and monumentally tired.  The 1st was my birthday, which we spent camping in the mountains East of Granite Falls, at an SCA event.

As part of the SCA event, the husband and I made a giant wild pig pinata.  We made it over the course of about six weeks; we were given a base spine, legs, and head from the last year's pig, but had to build up a rib cage, muscles, etc.  It wound  up being a pretty serious commitment, and honestly took a lot more time than I was expecting.  That said, it turned out okay:

We didn't do too much at the event itself -- mostly we relaxed at either our camp, or our friend's camp.

We were camped out by the river, which was lovely.

Cooking up some mushrooms and bacon, yum!

Can you see the salmonberry they are looking at?

Oz was given this, and was very excited to show it off.

Saffron and I hanging out.

At Saturday court, the husband received his award of arms, in recognition of his involvement in encouraging new members.  The award grants him the right to be styled officially as "Lord", the right to wear a circlet, and elevates his device to an actual coat of arms.  I was very happy to be able to see him get this award -- I've missed the ceremony for every other award he's received (not on purpose!).

Being granted the award by our baron and baroness.

The actual declaration of the award.

All of the kids at the event were called up as well, to be given gifts -- it seems that our new baron and baroness are very interested in encouraging the involvement of families.  Unfortunately, there were so many children that they ran out of gifts before my boys had their turn, so they took the kids names and tracked us down later in the day.  It was very kind of them.

The husband, wearing his new circlet.  I told him to look regal -- did it work?

Us with our pig's head, post-pinata-beating.

What-What?! Week of May 12th

Happy Mother's Day!


Last week was Osric's 7th birthday -- we celebrated on Sunday, so that way we could all be home for it.  The weather up until today has been lovely, with temps in the mid- to high-70s, just beautiful sunshine and warmth.

Oz was extremely excited for his presents

Corwin got him a Hot Wheels creepy bat manor thing.

Saffron got him a Pokemon handbook -- this has gotten a ton of use in the last week.

Lego shark set -- this one comes with three different sets of instructions; one for a shark, one for an angler fish, and one for a giant squid.  So far he hasn't made the shark yet, but he's done the other two creatures, which came out very cool.

He was very excited over this set too -- especially for the dinosaur with the laser guns!

This is a book full of experiments and explanations relating to physics and chemistry, etc. -- we had picked it up from the library once and he really liked it.

He has been begging for these yeti action figures for months; unfortunately, the manufacturer no longer makes them, so we had to pick some up off of ebay.  The sets are pretty cool -- this one features a "yeti" trap, which works like a bear trap.

And now he has a gameboy, like his siblings -- they've been having a good time playing together on these.

The first thing he did afterwards was get out all of his yeti guys, and his snow castle, and have a big battle.

Osric and I worked together to make a cake and cookies, and decorate them both.

It was pretty simple chocolate cake with blueberry filling and vanilla buttercream frosting.  The cookies are basic sugar cookies with flood icing.

In my opinion, one of the best things this Lego set that Osric got is that every single one of the characters can hold the coffee mug -- including the dinosaur!