Scurvy Pirate 10

For christmas I had picked up some Wooden Boat Kits from leevalley.com. I thought they would make a fun little project with BigE. After all his fun with Pirates I thought he might enjoy seeing a ship go together. That was mostly correct. There was a few too many peices and weak instructions to hold his interest. But he really did enjoy the finaly result.

Note by weak instructions I mean every piece had a number on every connection. Two peices with the same number were to be connected at those joints. The issue was that there was no real over all guide. I started with the keel and just worked my way up. It made it a little frustrating. All the pieces were pre-cut on the four sheets.

Here we are early on. You can get a glimpse of the instruction sheet and the precut pieces. This is where we started to slow down.

Here we are with some decking installed


And the final assembly ... minus the rigging.

BigE decided to name it the "Scurvy Pirate 10"


I'm not sure that will be going on. It might make those masts a little sturdier so I might do it. We're thinking about using some construction paper or cardboard to fill in the sides. It will give the other Playmobil pirate ship something to fire at.

Pirate Ship

Here is BigE's Pirate birthday cake. It took some work and the creative inspiration of four people but we got it sailing, sort 'o speak.

Two 9x13" pans of chocolate cake, a couple of tubes of chocolate icing, a tub of white icing (for the ocean), some PlayMobil Pirate guys, and two packs of small crispy crunch bars that were on sale for 67 cents each.

Some notes:
- That is a real piece of wood coming out of the bow of the ship (Sailing readers what the heck is that called?). I sanded it down smooth and wrapped the cake end in saran wrap that was mostly hidden by icing.
- The Playmobil pieces are mostly from a Pirate accessory kit that looks like this (amazon.com) but I don't think was a 1/3 of that price.
- The masts are skewers
- The crows nest is the bottom half of an ice cream cone
- The plank is a cadbury thin chocolate bar
- The guns where some kind of round waffer that had chocolate on one end.

Ahoy Matey

BigE became "Evil BigE" during a birthday party with Pirate Adventures. They've got a pontoon boat done up lie a pirate ship and take the kids out a little pirate adventure for an hour in a local bay. (really just a wide part of the river)



BigE had a blast. They got to say Arhhh, make Pirate Pete walk the plank, and find sunken treasure. And yes they did get to use those water canons. That's how the kids sunk Pirate Pete in his little boat.

We're in full fledged pirate mode around here right now.

Ahoy Matey's

Momma apparently thought this was a funny picture.



BigE and I were playing pirates in the back yard last night. Boy those kiddy door openings leave something to be desired.

Pirates Ahoy

After Pirate Adventrures we had a lull in the Pirate costumes. But they're back!

With BigE's cousins in town for a visit all the old toys are getting pulled out. This first picture was taken on Thursday. Friday morning they got up and back on went the costumes.

They even went to breakfast dressed like this!

BigE in his pirate costume a couple of hours later. I thought he was caught stealing some pirate treasure (chocolate chips or marshmellows) but he has his hands open pleading his innocence.



Notice that his cheeks seem a little bigger!

Another Soccer practice

Well after the vacation break we were back to the local community center for another soccer practice. After missing two weeks I was curious if the staff had started to figure out how to coach three year olds.

The verdict is in. And it is no. They're not evil, or incompetent. They're just teen aged city staff (read summer job people) hanging out with the kids. But they just don't seem to understand the attention span lengths they're dealing with.

Each week they spend (read waste) 5 to 10 minutes trying to get the kids into a circle and pass a single ball around. So in case you don't quite grasp the difficulty. Here are the steps involved in this drill:
(a) Herd the kids
(b) Form the circle
(c) Show the ball and explain the drill
(d) Repeat for the kids who weren't paying attention
(e) Pick the most timid kid first
(f) Manually move the kids leg to explain that whole kicking motion
(g) Re-herd the other kids
(h) Re-form the circle.
(i) Kick the ball.
(j) Some kids run off to get the ball that they all missed.
(k) Re-herd the kids
(l) Re-form the circle.
(m) Try to get they're attention
(n) Re-form the circle.
...
DING times up. Move on to the next drill.

Now imagine what the class is like. You only had to read that list. And let's be honest by (d) you were probably bored and skipped it. Picture twitching and hyper three years who just want to kick the ball.

But it's not all bad. BigE had a little bout of shyness to start this soccer practice. We missed the first five minutes when he didn't want to play. That was ok. But I informed him that we could go home but we would not play with the pirate ship instead.

Realizing there wasn't going to be a better activity in the next 30 minutes he decided to join in. Then it became the running practice. But as he ran circles, largely ignoring the soccer ball, he was having a blast.

He did join in to cheer GOOAAALLLLLLLLLLL! Even if the other team scored. Thankfully that's enough to keep us happy with it for now.

Pirate Adventures

BigE's little buddy comes over to play with the pirate ship. Now we're really glad that we had two pirate costumes.

Pirates Ho!

Well somebody got lucky. There was a discounted pirate plastic play house at a grocery store today. We'd been looking to get BigE a play house of some sort. He really seems to love those things. Plus it meets my criteria that we not keep buying things available across the street in the park. "He can walk the 500 ft to the park." I think that is what passes as a hard ass these days.



But imagine the surprise when opening up the package we find two packages contains some clothes. Hmmm what is that? Turns out it also includes two pirate costumes. Well shiver me timbers.



Somethings are worth the 10 cents of polyester.