Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate's Life for Me: Virginia Renaissance Faire

Last year we hit up the Maryland Renaissance Festival and had a very, um, interesting time.  We had no plans to go again this year, but Certifikid struck again.  A coupon for the Virginia Renaissance Faire popped up in mom's inbox and said it was being held at a Virginia winery and it was PIRATE'S WEEKEND.  Before mom had the good sense to check where, she bought it.  It just so happened that this little winery was 80 miles away in Lake Anna, which we noticed when we put the address in the GPS Sunday morning on our way to the Faire.  Hee hee, mom smiled at daddy (who had to go to be back in D.C. by 4 for a flight to London).  And while this was far away and much less of a professional operation than the Maryland festival, which has permanent fair grounds, mom thought it was better suited for kids our age.

As it was Pirate's Weekend, I put my trusty green pirate costume on.  Cami wanted to be dora pirate.  Then just dora.  Then a fairy dora.  Then fairy princess mermaid dora.  You decide what she ended up looking like.

There were the usual opportunities for people sightseeing, but it seemed much more geared towards interactive activities for little kids.  They have an entire kids area that offers different activities throughout the day -- they were making rag dolls when we visited.  And, on a whole, all of the people that worked there seemed very happy to engage the kids in whatever they were doing.  We got a lesson on ship navigation with old school tools on a makeshift pirate ship, learned about ancient weapons, and I got to try my hand at sword fighting.  Mom tried to get me to partake in archery, but dad said no way when he realized they were real bows and arrows.  Instead, he thought it more appropriate to let me take a turn at axe throwing.  Real axes.  Makes perfect sense.  Turns out I wasn't quite tall enough -- next year, man.

The food wasn't quite as spectacular as the Maryland festival and there wasn't a pirate ship playground, but this was a little more low-key and had lots of room to run around.  The highlight for me was likely the fierce pirate duel I got into with another small pirate -- he started it.  I think I finished it.  Cam joined in with her fairy wand, too.  (we were moving so fast mom only got blurry pictures, but it was hilarious).

We've actually been wanting to check out the Lake Anna State Park, so we'll probably head back out that way some day.  On the way there, we also passed by a Civil War reenactment and saw some cannons go off, so you can bet that's on our list of summer to do's.

The Virginia Renaissance Faire runs every weekend through June 10th.

We're taking off a few days for an extended holiday weekend, but if you are in need of ANYTHING to do, check out No Monsters in My Bed's new insanely good compilation of family friendly activities -- wowsers.  Catch you in white next week!

Let's Stick Together: Pirate Foam Stickers and FREE Coloring Pages

Whew!  What a doozy of a last week we've had.  It all started when I brought home a little 24-hour bug last weekend -- I didn't feel great, but I basically got to lay around and watch "my shows" for a day.  Then I was fine.  Mom, not so much.  She got whalloped -- acute sinusitis and pharyngitis (aka a nasty sinus infection and strep throat).  After a 2+ day migraine, she finally hauled herself into the emergency room at 3 a.m. Tuesday morning.  By herself.  In a cab.  Where she waited for 4 hours to see a "doctor" and then a medical student tried to refuse to give her any pain medicine because he "didn't really think" she was having a "real migraine."  Why?  Because this "headache" was different than her other migraines.  No BLEEP.  That's why she was at the emergency room.  Fortunately for him, she was heavily handicapped by her pain and he got what was likely a much more mild version of mommy's "now you listen to me, kid" rants.  Luckily the nurse intervened and mommy got hooked up with some IV drugs and fluid.  A few days of antibiotics and she's finally feeling better to suck it up and be our scribe again.  So what do I do?  Well I start puking all night long Thursday night.  Thank goodness Nona and D-Rock were in town to deal with me so mommy could get some much needed rest.  We are finally all on the mend.  For this week at least.

Now on to the more important things - PIRATES.  We've decided to stretch this pirate kick on out -- in anticipation of my big pirate birthday party next weekend.  At one of mom's recent duty days at my co-op preschool, we brought pirate coloring pages and pirate foam stickers to make some sweet buccaneer scenes.  We found some awesome FREE coloring pages on Disney's Family Fun page and printed out a bunch to bring to school.  Then we dug out our pirate foam stickers, which we've used before in our pirate dino prints, and used those to decorate the pirate ship.  Mom was a little worried about the stickers -- the backing isn't that easy to get off.  But that proved to be a good use of time and lots of little fingers.  And because the letter "A" is one of the letters we are learning this month, we talked about all of the different pirate words that start with the letter "A": Argggg! (duh) Ahoy! Anchors Away! Avast!  It was super fun, even though it was a pretty simple craft.