The Hobbits Are Back!

My kids love books.  My kids love audio-books.  I think they may have the audio version of The Hobbit memorized by now.  Due to my admittedly stubborn preference for paper pages in binding, we read it aloud first.

To coincide with the theater release of Part Two of The Hobbit, our amazing local library staff created another great event for the kids.  They do large scale (at least they look large scale to me) events regularly, and every one I've attended with the kids has been a blast.  The invite said to 'dress the part,' so we did.  Alex and Kathryn got brand new hobbit cloaks from my reluctant sewing machine. 

*Sewing intimidates me, frankly.  It's the whole inside-out, 3-d construction thing- messes with my head.  Ask my poor sister (recipient of my first attempts), whose super-comfy jammies' crotch was soundly mid-knee.  Nathan's pockets were sewn shut, and his jammies turned into a long skirt.  I've improved a bit since then, and cloaks are decidedly 2-d in nature, so we pulled it off.  Please note the highly artistic furry feet (brown magic marker :o)  Please also note that Kathryn refused such nonsense, making her perhaps the most well-groomed Hobbitess ever.*

Activities included making it safely through the spider webs, making furry feet (not as easy as ours), creating one's own dragon breath fire blower, the troll toss and lots of food for "our supper and afternoon tea."  Note to library staff:  yes, it makes sense to tell the children they mustn't touch the spider web threads (so they won't just go barging through), but such a command has a strange effect on my (thankfully) obedient and (somewhat) OCD kids.  That will explain Alex's slow and strange contortions to get through (wish I had a video of that- haha!) and Kathryn's mid-web panic when she realized it wasn't ACTUALLY POSSIBLE to not touch any threads.  Just so you know... 

Here are some fun pics of the "Unexpected Gathering" which was obviously expected, so... never mind.