Parent Involvement Day

Voice of Culture Drum and Dance of the Diaspora performed for Pablo’s school on Parent Involvement Day. They got everyone moving with djembe drumming, traditional West African dance and singing.

Before you watch this video remember Pablo needs sponsors for his read-a-thon. Won’t you consider donating a few dollars to a quality public school that brings in performances like these? Please let me know if Pablo can count on you for at least 5 bucks. Thanks.

Mama, Doodles, and I also visited Pablo’s classroom and helped make “Guess How Much I Love You” art work based on the story book. Doodles fits right in and acts like one of the class.

Off to shovel again. More videos later.

Bright Side Knights

At first when Pablo and Doodles started liking knights and the like we didn’t have much to feed their new passion. So I bought them foam swords, helmets, and shields at The Dollar Store and drew a fleur-de-lis crest on an old t-shirt.

attempted knight helmet pumpkin carving

As a kid, I was never into Dungeons & Dragons or swordplay (unless you count light sabers and Jedi Knights), but I thought of one thing we had on hand.

I resorted to showing them most of … Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, which later led to playing the Spamalot soundtrack. Doodles’ favorite song became
“Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”.

We’ve since obtained Knight Lights (yes), a classic old Fisher Price castle, little plastic knights, wooden swords and shields, and even attended the Renaissance Festival (a whole other blog entry of material).

Sometime in March the 3-year-old Doodles was playing with his brother. He said to us:

“We’re Bright Side Knights. I’m a Knight of the Bright Side.”

Brilliantly sums up his disposition. It’s become an excellent reminder that no matter how bad your day is, you can’t let it affect you too much if you have kids. Or they’ll bring you out the funk at some point even if they were the cause of it. And if anyone else needs some cheering up, talk to me about babysitting.

In fact, this was also our Halloween costumes after the kids were in bed. We jousted.