Now that I am blogging again, I am forcing myself to go back through old pictures. Pictures that I have been hoarding. Pictures that have been sitting on my camera card for years and years collecting figurative dust.
Pictures that I took so long ago that I see them again and say "Oh, Yeah! I remember that!".
Rather than just delete them, I am going to subject you to the 3,285 various things that I have photographed throughout the last many years until I am caught up (Ha! As if that will ever happen!) or you are begging me to stop.
Let's take a walk in the past, shall we?
Way back when Caleb was a 4th grader, he was assigned the project of choosing a famous person from history who influenced others in some way. Someone they could research, learn more about, and then present to the school and community in the form of a "wax musuem" (i.e. dressing up as said character and holding still as if made from wax while people walk around and ooh and aah at you and your poster).
Caleb chose Jesus.
Good idea but his teacher let him know that might take him a while to research and have almost too much to include in one poster, so Caleb went with his #2 guy.
General George Patton.
I, being the fairly well-educated individual that I am, had to google him. Caleb favorite show at the time was Greatest Tank Battles and so he already knew a lot about this general and really admired him. He let Mark and I know what he chose and since parents were encouraged to help, he let us know that he would like some props for the wax museum part. I immediately outsourced my responsibility of creating a costume for him to wear to my favorite mother-in-law. I even had Caleb do the calling so that she couldn't say no!
Mark immediately started planning the other props. As soon as he also googled who General Patton was, he got down to figuring out how to make Caleb a tank. 'Cause who doesn't think big tanks when they think of General Patton, right?
Caleb's poster and research turned out great. The tank though. That tank took over our garage. The fumes of Mark spray-painting that tank took over our house. And before I knew it, that tank took over my husband!
Mark was plotting and planning on that tank for days. He was making trips to the furniture stores looking for big boxes, trips to the carpet store looking for barrels of guns, and trips to McDonalds to keep his energy up (or so he said).
Caleb and Owen played in the tank, tried to sleep in the tank, had Nerf gun wars involving the tank, and of course, invited all their friends to come over and just look at the tank.
The day before the wax museum, Mark and I had to transport that ginormous thing to the gym and get it set up. We had to do all kinds of jimmy-rigging to get that thing into the doors of the gym. Multiple trips, lots of sweat, me yelling at Mark to "Pivot! Pivot! Pivot!".
Then the big day. I took half a day off to help all the kids get dressed, their posters and props set up, and then to help them get into position for all the guests to come in and see them. The kids were supposed to strike a pose and then hold it for 10 minutes. They weren't supposed to look at people or move as if they were truly made of wax.
For the most part Caleb was really successful at that.
But I did get him to break character once or twice.
"Yohoo! Over here Caleb! I'm not going to stop bugging you until you let me get your picture!"
So he humored me.
And then promptly told me to leave him alone.
After all the hoopla, the kids whooped and hollered once the last visitors exited the gym and Caleb quickly pretended they were all German invaders and he shot at them with his tank. Then we packed that thing up where it lived in Mark's den for about a month.
The first week is was played with almost every day but as each passing week went back it dwindled down to almost a trickle of attention until finally, while we were at school, Mark burned it and said good-bye.
I was a little sad to see it go because the tank was pretty cool but it was really too big to keep around for long. Caleb however did get some more wear out of his costume as he used it for his Halloween costume that same year (against his will because his mom was too cheap to buy him something new when he had a perfectly good costume to use!).
I'm sure those pictures will surface up here in a day or two as I continue to go through this camera card!
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