Two Gladiators and a Princess

The first weekend of August we babysat Marco on Saturday while Sarah and Jeff spent the day wine tasting in Napa. The kids were thrilled that they got to hang out with Marco all day and they were excited and asking about Marco's arrival as soon as they got up.

We packed the day with fun - starting out with the end of the year picnic at Nikos' school. Taki had a shift at the bbq (which I can tell you was about a million times less stressful than my 1/2 hour shift at the jumpy house!)

Olive enjoyed some face painting (she picked to be a princess - who's shocked?)

Nikos picked a dinosaur.

Side note - don't I totally look like Mel in this pic??

Unfortunately (for me) Marco not only decided he wanted his face painted after the painters "on shift" already vacated, but he picked the same thing Nikos had...so it is quite easy to draw comparisons between my ghetto blue dinosaur and Nikos' legit one.
Nikos then decides he wants a shark as well - at least now they both have a ghetto one.

Did I mention the jumpy house? At least my shift was only a half hour (a half hour of letting 8 kids at a time take 3 minute shifts - eek!), so I got to enjoy the kids having fun in it.

Back at home we dabbled in some art projects.

Olive and I went on a field trip to get some pink in her hair - I was excited but Olive was super excited. To my surprise she went with a more purplish pink (fuschia) that she calls purple. She was so good for the short process of putting the extension in - sat super still!

I asked her if she wanted one or two purples and she said (all quiet and serious) "I want to princess purples please mama".

As soon as we got back in the car she said "hurry up, I wanna show Nikos and Marco my pretty princess hair!"

When we got back the boys were sword fighting - but they were gracious enough to stop mid-fight to admire Olive's hair. "So pretty Olive." "You look like a princess."

Sword fight observers.

Next up the kids play with a foam dart and get it stuck in our tree. I come up with the genius idea to throw the red ball into the tree to knock down the dart.

If you look in the top right of that picture you will realize this was obviously a brilliant move. I'll save you the pic of the Toy Story bat and the Cars ball that I then threw up after it. Luckily this then became a game with the kids to see how we could knock it down. (Winner = Taki. Obvs.)

Taki decides he's going to play Thunderdome with the kids - which basically involves him tossing various balls at the kids and trying to knock them over before they make it through the bat finish line on the other side.

Competitor: Nikos

Competitor: Marco

Competitor: Olive

And the tables are turned my friends...

Celebration after a long game in the Gladiator pit? Ice cream! Nikos and Marco were kind enough to share a chair - since Jack put out other one pretty much out of commission except for 25lb Baby O.

And after a long day - a little Cars can't hurt.

Yay to our friend Marco!