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!

Boys and Sticks

 We went to the library the other day and I came across a book about sticks. I thought this was a great idea. Someone actually put together an entire book on how to play with sticks. Why didn't I think of that?!?!

The boys naturally gravitated to the chapter on weapons and so began our evening outing to Junction Creek to look for bows and arrows and swords. Patrick is now a proud owner of a pocket knife (which was his souvenir from Greece)  and was able to widdle the sticks to their proper shape (with a little help and muscle from us of course). A little twine, a hand saw (which made it a whole lot easier), and a pocket knife and boy, we were on our way.

In case you were wondering what weapons and neighborhood kids might looks like if they just so happened to be in the same location, you can take a look at Aeneas's eye. A near miss. Keep it within the family with some adult supervision! Jeeze.

In the past, we have made forts with some of the techniques used in this book. Here is one you have already seen but one we did recently along with some other great uses for sticks.

Fort sticks

 Stick Foosball!

Comparison sticks

Cooking sticks for stick and bug soup.

 Collection Sticks!

 Stick signs.

Fire sticks!

 Walking sticks

 Fiddle sticks

Save your money and go to the woods for some good play sticks!

Alpine Adventures: Stage 3

Ever since we moved here we have heard people rave about the Silverton fireworks show as the best they have ever seen. But with a late night show followed by a winding road, 2 mountain passes, no guard rails and a road packed with travelers pushing the travel time home to 2.5 hours, there was no way we were going to try it without a place to stay up there for the night. There were fires around Pagosa Springs and Wolf Creek Pass was closed, our normal route, so we detoured around via the Million Dollar Highway through Silverton and Ouray to access the Lost Wonder hut, dropping a few tents and chairs on our way through at a BLM campground outside of Silverton hoping for the best. 

When we returned to Silverton, everything was there! Parking was a mess and it looked like a mix of a NASCAR race and a refugee camp but all of the people were respectful, quiet and nice. Everyone was on top of each other and yet it seemed just fine. The McAlvany's met us up there with their kids and it turned out to be one of the funnest 4th of July weekends I've ever had. 

Fire restrictions left us roasting over the Coleman. 

Patrick, Dashel, Declan and Aeneas.

We all travel with the jumbo packs of baby wipes just in case we end up with something like this!

Good job Tess!

This was the first trip where the boys got to "sleep" in a kid tent. They horsed around until about 12:30 am and all woke up giving each other the McAlvany and McBrayer torture respectively. All in good fun of course.

Blair street, Silverton, Colorado

Hanging out on the drawtight waiting for the parade!

Movie star Tess.

I'm glad someone brought books!

The boys' favorite float.

Justin's favorite float.

It was fun watching the jeep to the left almost pull the bumper off the one in the middle during their stunt.

 The fire department water fight. 

Back to the campground and all of the boys put on their own parade with their own made up song and throwing beads.

Then we spent the hours of the afternoon making mud soup.

They worked really hard on this.

The big boys skipped rocks. This never gets old.

Justin teaches Mathias (Dave and M-C's bro in law) how to play Oh Heck.

After M-C had her fill, we all got to partake in some traditional 4th of July BBQ! It was really good coming from a girl from the South, where the BBQ flows like water.

The fireworks are indescribable. We were so close that they exploded over our heads. And they were so bright we had to close our eyes at times. They were so loud, each boom was heard 4 to 5 times as it echoed back and forth off the mountains surrounding Silverton. We parked on the highway and managed to skirt the traffic backed up that was headed to Durango and were at our camp in 15 min. What a fun celebration!

Happy Birthday USA!

Alpine Adventures: Stage 1

Catching up with old Berry College friends is difficult when everyone is scattered to the wind, however there are times when the stars align and we can manage to get together. Ramu moved to Denver about 3 months ago and before Erik headed back east to Knoxville for a fellowship we literally had one weekend where all of us were with in driving distance of each other.

So began the McBrayer week long camping trip to the alpine forests of Colorado. We started at the Lost Wonder Hut of Monarch pass to meet up with Erik and Ramu and their families.

4 wheel drive road and a last minute dinner for the PA meant Bella got to come up to the cabin ahead of her parents with the Bergers. There wasn't room for everyone in the truck. She didn't mind the dust too much.

The Lost Wonder Hut stands in the shadow of Mt Aetna, sleeps 14 people and is a nice shelter out of the elements all year around. It also comes with paper products, a gas stove with oven, all the dishes you could possibly need and a brand new gas grill. A beautiful place.

No sign of mice but they would have had a hey day with the amount of stray cheerios we managed to scatter across the floor of the hut. This is Erik's wife Kristen with their two girls, Karlee and Morgan.

Aeneas and I we exploring the avalanche slide looking for spiders after breakfast.

This is Veronica, Ramu's wife with Isabella. She's not too fond of the Baby Bjorn.

However, she really hates it when she's strapped to JP and Mama is out of sight. I can't imagine why.

Someone forgot their truck up there.

Because Kristen is an overachiever and good like that, she carries both girls while her husband hikes ahead, shooting his pellet gun.

Taking a little hike

A little brake on the way

This was in a swamp on the hike. Does anyone else find this remarkable?!? Guess what it belongs to.

Come on. We haven't changed that much since our Berry days...

Nope. Just the same.

The boys loved this place.

Poker and whiskey in the wilderness. How cliche. 

Aunt Chris and Uncle George along with Lindsay came up to hang one night.

Kristen and Ramu.

Look at this cute family!

Morgan and Mama Kristen

The world's awesomest dog, Auggie.

Of course the Berger boy would bring his treasure hunting tools. The creek was so cold, no one could stand it for more than a few minutes, even the Hulk there. No gold for us.

Patrick thought Morgan was really cool!

Karlee and her flower princess crown. I've got to spoil the girls when I've got them. A and P are hardly in to these.

Awesome fort that Justin and the boys made once the others left.

Lost Wonder Hut has playable instruments galore if you are so inclined.

No camping is complete without s'mores.

These two turned out to be best buddies.

More to come...