Pirate Day!!!

 Ahoy landlubbers!!  Yesterday we had ourselves a piratey day!  (well it wasn't yesterday anymore)

 A local pool was having a Shipwreck Lagoon day, with anyone in pirate costume getting free admission.  We had been wanting to visit this pool, as this pool has extras like waterslides and such, but it's hard to pay $6/person when we already have two pools in our apartment complex and a family pool pass to two other community pools.  So when I found out they were having a pirate day (and I was already planning a pirate themed date that would have required a pool anyway) I couldn't pass it up.

Above is Peter going down one of the smaller slides.  They had several slides of varying sizes so that everyone from a baby who could barely walk to adults could have fun.  Our boys liked going down different slides and practicing their new swimming skills.  

Below is Rachel trying to cross the Lily Pad Walk.

 Here's me in my pirate get up.

Here's the boys nicely sharing their snowcones (though they balked when we wanted more than our initial momma tax and dadda tax)

For dinner we had steak shiskabobs called Tsire (marinated with peanut butter, red pepper and ginger based on a recipe pirates might have picked up from Africa), grilled onions (to ward off scurvy), hard tack, some pirate themed cheese puffs, and root beer.  The hard tack was mostly cooked in the car while we were at the pool, because I didn't want to have the oven on for hours with triple digit temperatures.   They still had to be cooked a bit in the oven and wound up more tough than stale.  But they weren't intended to be that great tasting and made a starchy contrast to the savory meat.

After dinner, we were going to watch the old Disney classic "Blackbeard's Ghost"  Unfortunately we couldn't find the rent button on the Amazon page.  Instead the boys watched a pirate themed episode of Inspector Gadget on Hulu.  They also built a pirate ship from a book I picked up for a dollar at the half-price bookstore.

The movie/shipbuilding kept them busy while I made some final preparations.  Inside an old book on pirates (also from Half Price Books) they found a treasure map.

The treasure map was made on translucent drafting paper (I think that's what it was--I got it years ago and hoped it would be useful for something).  The translucent maps the treasure hunt to cover multiple locations without having the location marked on the original map.  Each piece could be aligned with the compass and overlayed on the original map to find the location of the next clue.

 Buried in a corner of the volleyball court was a treasure chest!!

Jon carries the loot home to be divided up.

The treasure consisted of jewelry (some which already belonged to Rachel and some which were new surprises), plastic beads, coins, and a big diamond looking thing.  There were some Hersheys chocolates that looked like gold bars (if gold bars oozed brown stuff when squeezed).  I originally got them for Rachel and me since chocolate coins aren't usually that great.  But I had used up my stash of chocolate coins for a church primary lesson a few weeks ago and couldn't find any more at the three or four stores I checked.  Rachel and the boys were all excited about the treasure they had found.