Blacksmith

Early to bed, early to rise.  This morning's service featured some familiar faces from Mario World, as seen above:  Princess Peach, Luigi and Mario.  We were talking about a "boss battle," which in Bible-talk was the story of David and Goliath.  One tip for winning a boss battle:  read the gamer's manual.  That's your Bible.  Oh, and like Mario, you have extra lives.  If you fail, just get back in the game and try again!

It was a fun morning, followed by a relaxing afternoon.  Of course, we ate lunch - and afterwards did a lot of catching up on piano homework.  We have a lot to do tomorrow afternoon as well - we were sort of behind there.  But there's a point to stop, and that's when we went to go visit this guy:

He's a dwarf blacksmith from the Lego Lord of the Rings game.  I think his name is "Dwarf Blacksmith."  Madison couldn't wait to get back to this guy, because we had the plans for him to make a bow that shoots out carrots at people.  This is the sort of thing that blacksmiths do.  This guy plays a fairly big part in the game, so we see him a lot so that he can make us stuff.  What's great is that we have to help him by giving him metal, and then heating up the fire by jumping on the billows.  He then begins hammering away at the molten metal, and creates for us whatever his latest masterpiece is.

It's a neat educational moment, which leads me to yesterday's visit with a real blacksmith.  Can you believe Madison really wanted to see this?  She's seven, and she wants to see a blacksmith demonstration.

He didn't make a bow that shoots carrots though.  He did, however, make a spoon.  Spoon!  It was a really interesting demonstration for all of us, actually.  We learned a few things about forming and shaping, and the intense heat required.  It's a trade that isn't really required so much, whereas it used to be something everyone needed.  We were glad the blacksmiths are still on hand to connect us to the past, and educate us about the way things used to be.  If you give me the right equipment, I now know how to make you a spoon!

Tonight we popped in a movie that Madison hadn't seen before:  "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad."  We only saw the last part, as it was all about Ichabod Crane and his misadventures with the Headless Horseman.  This story gave me the creeps when I was a kid, but Madison was pretty unfazed by it.  As mentioned on this blog before, the church in this story (and drawn in the movie) is something that plays a part in our family history.  Daddy's family line shoots straight back to Sleepy Hollow, right at the time Washington Irving was writing his tale.  In fact, right in that family line you can find a Catherine Van Tassel, a name pretty similar to the girl in Irving's story.  We popped some popcorn and watched it together - Madison enjoyed it.  

But soon it was time for bed.  We're all a bit exhausted from the weekend, so Madison went down quickly.  Mommy and Daddy, however, stayed up for another feature movie - this one an older October-themed flick:  "Something Wicked This Way Comes."  So off to Dark's Pandemonium Carnival we go once more, reminding ourselves once again that not all carnies are out to suck out your soul.  Just a few of the ones we ran into yesterday...