Here is my baby’s latest and greatest source of pride:

Her 4th grade Native Indian Social Studies project.

My baby had great concerns with this project at first. They had to do this project with a partner, but they didn’t get to choose their own partners. Instead, the partners were assigned by their 4th grade teacher. A boy was assigned to my baby. A particularly disappointing boy.

Undeterred by my baby’s unhappy predicament, I dispatched a note to Bryce’s mom, and invited him over to our house last Saturday afternoon to work on this project.

Bryce was promptly delivered to our house at 2PM. His mom promised to come and pick him up at 6PM.

I miscalculated.

That Saturday was a huge football weekend, where both the Broncos and the 49ers, our favorite NFL teams were playing for a spot to move one step away from the Super Bowl game. That meant that we were going to leave the two kids working by themselves largely unsupervised in the living room.

We had to watch the big games!

I had my doubts for leaving these two 9-year-olds on a 4 hour long project by themselves, and half accepted that their project will be a disaster.

I couldn’t be more wrong.

Young Bryce turned out to be quite a perfectionist. He took over an hour meticulously measuring, cutting, and gluing the grass mat around a river they painted onto their foam board.

When he was finally done with it, I saw that the Hupa Indian tribe lived on a golf course.

Not to be outdone, the baby made this Hupa sweat house out of popsicle sticks.

The Hupa sweat house was a house made out of wood planks where the hunters would gather. Prior to this project, my imagination only permitted teepees as shelters for the native Indians.

My 9-year-old is highly experienced with arts and crafts. She glued down the Sweat House with rocks and fake bush, and this looks just like a replica of an image of the Sweat House she found on the internet.

The two kids worked splendidly well together, and were having fun.

They had a supply of a few Indian and animal figurines, along with some fake trees and bushes, and were left alone to put on the finishing touches. They were expected to glue these items onto various places on their project.

When I returned to check up on them, instead of simply placing these items onto their tribal land, they had conspired to BBQ a cow over an open fire.

Then, just across the river, a Hupa hunter speared a bleeding buffalo.

I would like to vacation at this Native Indian Golf and Game Resort.

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Sweet Little Village

My kids have not been themselves during this winter break, entirely unrecognizable.

Their normal activities during holidays at home consist of lounging around, reading, roaming the house in their pjs, and raiding the refrigerator and our snack pantry. The easy life.

For unknown reasons, they quit their peaceful existence and suddenly took up homemade swords and hacked at each other for joy!

I am not to be blamed for any of this. We have never supplied them with weapon-like toys of any kind. No!

They did not seek my help. They made all sorts of swords, daggers, and a shield themselves. They took a considerable amount of time, and used rulers, cutters, scissors, glue, and duct tape to make the fighting toys out of foam boards.

Their craftsmanship has been rather impressive.

Throughout the day, they picked up these weapons and had fiery gladiator-like fights that went from the living room to the family room and back.

This very childish and extremely boyish behavior has been way more puzzling than upsetting to me. I will even admit, that their dramatic staged fights have been entertaining.

I am ready for whatever this phase is called to end though. But they are not appearing to be done. They have just started to craft these Hobbit and conceal-sized daggers, and have yet to demonstrate how they will be utilized.

Sigh…I will just have to sit tight and wait for their reign of terror to end.

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