Medieval Feast, Finis Est.

In other words, the feast is over! And it was a big success too! We had very little food left over, always a sign of a good party. We had 14 kids, 2 teenagers, and 11 adults, so it was a full house, especially when it was full of rampaging knights (we had 9 knights and 5 fair maidens). We started the kids off decorating their crowns with "jewels" and glitter glue, since I knew they would take awhile to dry. Then everyone put on the capes I had made (a big hit), and we went outside to play games. First, they shot lima beans at a cardboard castle I made (not the big one we spent tons of time on--that's a different castle!). They used the catapults I made from toilet paper rolls, cardboard, and skinny leastic. They worked pretty well, although eventually the boys got tired of just sieging the castle, and so they attacked it with swords. Then we played a game straight out of one of the library books on medieval times that we got out. One person stands in the middle of a circle and closes his eyes and says this chant:

Cobbler, cobbler, mend my shoe, fix it up and make it new. One, two, three, four stitches will do."

While he is saying this, the kids are passing around, behind their backs, a shoe. When he stops, they stop passing it, and then he has to guess who has the shoe. It was fun, but we didn't play too many rounds because were were melting in the humidity, plus it was time to eat. Everyone chowed down on the chicken legs, veggie platter, cheese cubes, bread slices, and grapes and melons. Then we had to shoo all the knights outside to run around because things were getting hairy inside. They ran around for quite awhile out there. We kept seeing flashes of purple (the capes) go past the front door. When they came in, we ate our gingerbread and lemon squares for dessert. They played some more, the adults visited, and people left around 9:15. Then it was bathtime for our stinky boys! It was a really fun time, and now I am so exhausted! We took some pictures with our digital camera, and maybe we'll try to post them tomorrow, but not right now--I can hardly type straight! You would not believe how many times I have had to go back and correct things tonight! Tomorrow afternoon I have a massage scheduled at the massage school nearby, so hopefully I'l be nice and relaxed tomorrow night and ready to learn the new skill of posting pictures!