Junior Park Ranger McBrayer

While the AR McBrayers were here, we took a side trip out to Mesa Verde, one of our favorite places to visit. The entrance is only about 35 min from here and they have just finished their brand new visitor's center at the entrance to the park which as it turns out, is quite stunning! ( I wish I had pictures to show you).

Not sure how many of you know but all National Parks (and most if not all State Parks) have a Junior Ranger program that is designed for kids from 4 years old to 12. It's a program that encourages kids to protect their parks and learn a bit more about each park during their visits. If you fulfill all of the requirements by the end of your visit, you can take the oath to become a Jr. Ranger and are awarded a medal to show off!.

 Here are my little Jr. Rangers working hard on their booklets inside of the archaeological museum.

They took this project very seriously. Greenpea is hard at work. 

The kids were so engaged that I ran with it and had them complete almost the entire booklet before I realized they only needed to select a few activities. There are different activities depending on the age groups you have too.

Here they are making cornmeal that they even bothered to taste! (I imagine it tasted just like sand since there wasn't actually corn in there and eroded rocks turn into just that!)

"Raise your right hand…or your left, or maybe just any ol hand and repeat after me."

Right from left. Something it looks like we all need to work on...

I am always amazed at just how thoroughly these rangers double check the kids work and correct them as they go along. They don't give these badges to just anyone, you know.

I am proud to announce that we left Mesa Verde with 4 Junior Rangers that day!

Honor & Strength & a Big Imagination

My little warriors asked to be Spartans this year for Halloween. Only problem is that Spartans pretty much wear nothing more than a pair of leather undies and a red cape. Precisely why my youngest found this so appealing! 

Even if we could get past the idea of basically streaking through the neighborhood for Halloween, which might work in Georgia, we happen to live in Colorado where we could easily have 6" of snow on the ground by All Hallows Eve! Tighties and a cape aren't gonna fly.

All I could think of doing to warm them up, was to buy a muscle suit until I ran across a tutorial for this. Can you say GENIUS?!?!

I'm not gonna lie. I looked at all of the pictures and then sort of made it up as I went. A scrap piece of material, stuffing, layered it inside  50 cent t-shirts from the thrift, drew lines with a ruler and sewed along the lines. Much easier than all that cutting!  I added a little darker color paint to the creases and added a belly button and I was a hero! 

Ok so I wasn't a hero. The 6 year old woke up the next morning with a huge grin on his face scrambling to try it on and the 8 year old said, "I'm so not gonna wear that!" (Are we seriously there already?!?) Oh well. We can layer real clothes under all of this and it will only make them stronger looking!

Cereal boxes, elastic, glue gun applique and some bronze spray paint. I learned this from some over the top, overly creative helmet how to on instructibles. 

"Ain't nobody got time fo dat!"

So I ordered the shield/sword combos which were totally worth the $12 on Amazon and the Spartan helmets which were totally NOT worth the $12 on Amazon and ended up being pretty cheap. 

"Honor and Strength" is the saying on the shield. I think these were so cool with the spot for the sword to fit into the shield. You know like for when you are marching and you need to carry a spear too...

Choir robes from thrift for the capes.

And a cut up leather skirt that my mother sent me (Sorry mom. I looked for Annie Oakly accessories to go with it to no avail but I still got three Spartan costumes out of it!)

Curtain rods from thrift. And I might add, the 8 year old is taking this picture pretty seriously even though he said he'd never wear those muscles...

You might be asking, where is the third Spartan? He is actually going to be a Roman soldier (so they have someone to fight, naturally) and since he already has bulging muscles I didn't make him a muscle shirt and I am totally making him wear the leather briefs version of the bottoms! (That will have you checking back for another post! He he.) And as you might imagine, he's not really all that in to dressing up on random nights more than a week before the big candy binge and sparing in the courtyard in front of a bunch of college students. 

Happy Halloween!