medievil projects

Why is it that our kids projects become our projects?  I think partly because we don't want them to fail because if they do poorly then it reflects on us. Partly because we feel nostalgic, or because they are doing it wrong and its driving us crazy to see them struggle, and in my case because they nag and whine and cry and get SO frustrated they start breaking things and hurting people.
Now you all know I love a good project, I practically live off of them, however I only like projects that are MY idea.  So in spirit of warding off all things unholy I jumped in to help. 1st thing was the castle.  Ellie had some grand design but it was a little overwhelming so I suggested we scale it down. The painting took f-o-r-e-v-e-r because I painted each little stone.  I had Ellie paint with me but it wasn't quite turning out to her expectations so that painting was left to me.
Next came the sword. I want Ellie to help as much as possible so she was the designer, I was the "super adult vision" (inside joke) and used the dangers as Peter call them.  I thought I would use my new toy and my brothers belt sander to make one bad A#% life sized sword.  Everything was smooth sailing until I tried to make the hilt.  I had to do it 3 times because the wood kept splitting.  I thought I could just tap it on the sword but apparently my skills are not that good.  Oh well the sword got finished and Ellie painted it a nice shiny silver.
Now we move on to the shield.  This turned out to be the easiest of the projects so we whipped it out in no time.  Not super detailed but I let Ellie draw out the shape and design she wanted, we screwed a handle on the back and voila.



Next I get back from my workout Thursday night (after 9pm) When Ellie says she has to have her family tree done by tomorrow.        Since we already had the idea planned out I couldn't deviate and go the easy way.  So I got a poster sized sheet of water color paper where I drew and painted an intricate tree with roots then I told her to fill it all out with the info we gathered earlier.  This should have taken no more than 2 minutes but she had a hard time with the concept of working backwards. We wrapped it up around 11pm that night.  Scott keeps asking when this whole medieval thing is going to be over.  I find myself asking the same thing.