May the Force be with you

So it has been a busy three weeks...

The main event over the past three weeks has been Isaak's birthday.

Five years has sure gone by fast and the baby that you see in the photo has sure grown up.

Since we didn't have a party for him last year, we decided to have a birthday party for his friends last Saturday. We thought he would want a Cars themed party, or maybe a pirate themed party, but he decided that he wanted a Star Wars party.

Now, a Star Wars party could be a fine party, but what did he want to do? I think Isaak has seen all of about 45 minutes of all three movies combined, but has some Star Wars toys and has played Star Wars Lego on grandma Nelson's iMac. Simply stated, he doesn't have a lot of Star Wars knowledge to build a party upon.

So what do you do with a bunch of 5 year old kids to keep them entertained for two hours?





The answer: Light sabers. (or is it lightsabers?)






We decided to set up a "Jedi Training Camp" and let the young padawan party goers all learn to be a Jedi. One problem: How do you do this and how to make it seem more than just a 2 hour sword fight between all the boys.

Well, luckily Wendy has a couple of brothers that are borderline Star Wars geeks. One of them had a long brown Jedi cloak and some Star Wars toys.

Next, we bought some light sabers, 7 to be exact from Wal-Mart to give to each of the kids.

But it wasn't quite realistic. We thought of having them decorate some sort of head band, but ended up buying several yards of white fabric, cut some holes for heads, draped it over their heads and tied a brown sash of sorts around to make them look like Jedis in training.

I think it turned out pretty well.

Next, I watched the Jedi Training stuff that they do at Disneyland on Youtube and put together a little training on how to use the light sabers. That was their basic training.




So after each young Jedi learned how to handle his/her weapon, we went down to the Intermediate training room (basement) so they could learn some defensive moves. We had our tumbling mat out and let each do some somersaults and then they learned to roll away from danger, jump, activate their weapons and strike. Finally, they learned to jump over an opponents weapon, roll, jump to their feet and strike at the enemy. The kids loved this.





Finally, after some long training and a few games of musical chairs thrown in, they were ready for the final test, a fight against the Jedi Master







We sent the kids off after a couple hours of fun, pizza and cake with their own lightsaber and they could keep the outfit. I have had a couple of reports from parents that one kid wanted to sleep in his jedi outfit, one wore his all day and I have seen a couple of them running around the neighborhood wearing their costumes - So I guess they had fun and liked the party

Is it Salsa or Seltzer? Salsa or Selzta?

George Castanza didn't fully unterstand the importance of a good salsa, orther wise he never would have said salsa sounds like seltzer...



Do you ever find yourself in the Mexican section of the grocery store, looking for a good salsa, hot sauce, or picante sauce. You don't know if the stuff you are looking at is made in New Jersey or by the people who know mexican food in El Paso? Is the photo of Paul Newman in a sombrero creeping you out on the jar of his Mango Salsa?



Take a tip and try out this Salsa ------------>

You will not be dissappointed. Forget about Pace, Old El Paso and the rest. This is where it is at. If you are lucky, it will probably be one of the cheaper salsas on the shelf, too.

Anyone out there have some other reccommendations for favorite salsa?

Art Appreciation 101

Today I went to look up something on Wikipedia and noticed the article of the day was about this painting:It is called Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez. This is one of my favorite paintings by Velázquez. I have seen the original of this painting in the Prado Museum in Madrid and it is wonderful.

I remember a lecture a year or so after my mission where the professor, Nathan Winters, talked about this painting in detail, showing specifics like the artist painting his self portrait. The way that he included the parents (King and Queen of Spain) in the painting by showing them in the mirror. How the lighting higlights the young princess, but distorts the two "little people".

I also enjoy this painting by Velázquez:

The class I took from Nate Winters was one of my favorites. What is now more interesting to me is that he was the former Bishop of my wife's LDS ward when she was growing up and is a friend of their family. My in-laws have a few water colors that he painted and we have one that we need to get re-framed.