This coming weekend is Medieval Times Weekend.  We’ve been making preparations for it.

We have been talking for a long time about putting up a jousting pole, and Mark drew up a plan for it.  Today Jeff assigned Clyde to help Mark put it up.  Mark built it and Clyde dug the hole and put it in.  Mark tried to help with that, but Clyde wouldn’t let him.  (He’s the salt of the earth!)  It’s not finished yet.  We tried putting water balloons on one arm of it and the weight caused the shield arm to go up.  Even though tomorrow is the start of our weekend, Mark is going to go work on it some more.  It’s okay because he’s going to take some time off on Friday morning to go see his doctor.

I worked on putting together a new display for this weekend.  I made castles for each of the display cases.  Cathy had painted a leather boy shape as a knight, so I put that in one of the displays.  Linda had painted a ceramic fairy, so I put that in the other case, along with a sand art castle I made.  It looks really good, if I do say so myself.  Linda’s working on the days I have off, and she’s going to come up with some free craft ideas and add those to the display.  Maybe I can get a picture to send when it’s done.

We had a few children in this morning.  They are cousins, and the mother of one of the sets of kids was just diagnosed as having pneumonia so the kids bought card making kits and made get well cards for her.  They were really nice, well-mannered kids.  I wonder if they were Mennonite because the girls all wore knee-length skirts and had long hair.

When I was talking with the kids about making get well cards, it occurred to me that I should really make something of the fact that our card making kits cost less than cards in the store.  I found a picture of a surprised woman and made a laminated sign to that effect to put up next to the kits.  Our kits only cost fifty cents!

Also, there’s a couple visiting from one of the Legacy parks in Missouri.  They came into the Activity Center and were really impressed with it.  They don’t have a center quite like this, but they were talking about how they might set one up after they saw our place.

I have reorganized everything to try to fit more ceramics on the shelves and make it more well known that we have shirts that can be tie-dyed.  I have somewhere between $700-$800 worth of ceramics and other crafts on order, trying to gear up for the crowds we are expecting to get starting Memorial Day weekend.  We’ve accomplished a lot in the last couple days and it feels very satisfying!