AAARRRRG me hardy

This afternoon around 4:30 my neighbor Cathy called me to see if T-Rex was going to the "pirate thing." Ummmm..... I had no idea what she was talking about (T-Rex told Dad not Mom), so she clued me in to the fact that Buddy S and T-Rex and the other fencing kids were invited to the state museum for their pirate night exhibit. The museum was showing Princess Bride, opening up late for their big pirate exhibit, and having fencing as a bit of entertainment.

Crud..... they also had to dress up. So on very short notice, and raiding my sister Natalie's closet (she is a bellydancer so she has a lot of costumey kind of "stuff") this is what we came up with.

Once at the museum we saw all kinds of people dressed up.

Rick (the coach) had the older kids suit up in their fencing gear while the newer kids stayed in pirate gear and talked to the audience about swords/foils/sabers/cutlasses, etc. Rick had T-Rex walking around with an actual cutlass and showing people, while other kids had other weaponry from the time period.

As the older kids fenced he gave a running monologue about the difference between movie fighting (like Princess Bride) and actual fighting (someone dies in about 10 seconds and 3 moves). The kids would then rotate out and finally T-Rex and Buddy S got to face each other. T-Rex wasn't thinking about her footwork, and Buddy S was really putting together some great lunges.

Eventually one of the boys rotated in and the coach spoke about how it was one of the few sports where men and women competed against each other. The kids had a great time, and T-Rex really seems to be loving this whole thing.

If she starts to get really serious then we'll have to move on to a more competitive group, but this has been a pretty good, casual introduction.