Evie's Birthday Pt. 2

After our party we dropped the littler girls off at a friend's house and the rest of us made our way to Myrtle Beach.  I had been keeping the secret of Evie's surprise forever!  I started planning several months ago, so we had a special "princess" dress for her, a new crown and scepter, and money saved to purchase the tickets, which was good because it was a bit pricey!  We went to a place called Medieval Times!  It was so much fun for everyone.

It's a castle with full costumes on every person.  The ticket people, the lady handing out crowns, Baxter, our server or as they called it, "our serf", all were in costume and called us lords and ladies the whole time.  I got a kick out of it and so did the kids.  Daddy and Grampa enjoyed it more because the kids were having so much fun.

When we were seated we found some great platters, mugs, and a bowl with a handle made to look like pewter (but much lighter plastic).  Then I had the pleasure of telling my cute 6 and 3 yr old that there was no silverware, they were to eat with their hands!  Joe gleefully enjoyed the idea, but Evie's reaction was a bit more like consternation.  I couldn't understand the problem until she looked at me very seriously and asked, "mom, how do I eat like a princess?"  I didn't understand until she followed the question with ,"I miss silverware."  I couldn't believe it.  Here my girl who can't keep her hands out of anything is missing her fork!

In Evie's world, princesses were very careful and polite which I agreed with, but she didn't understand how things actually were in the 11th century when there were real princesses.  So while Joe grabbed a huge handful of half a chicken, Evie carefully picked at her chicken taking small bites.  It was very cute.

While we ate and enjoyed our surroundings, the show began.  We were introduced to our particular knight.  We were wearing the yellow knight's colors and sitting in his section.  That meant that we cheered for our handsome yellow knight and boo-ed for everyone else, especially the green knight who was our visiting bad guy!

The show was an actual story about a kingdom whose king was trying to forge a treaty with a warring neighbor.  The prince and his man went out to offer the terms, but didn't come back, while the "bad guy", our green knight, swaggered into the court, yelling and defying everyone.  The king and the princess received him graciously and invited him to participate in the tournament, until the prince returned with the terms of the treaty.

 The green knight agreed and the tournament began.

We watched all the sword fighting - 

cheering for our yellow knight the whole time

The kids attention was glued to the events. I'm sure they ate something at some point, but I don't really remember focussing on that too much.  I was enjoying watching the tournament myself.

I was enjoying, but Evie was thrilled.  She LOVED the whole thing.  She loved the princess, the knights, the king, and all the fun things that came with the tickets.

We watched the parade of colors come in representing each knight.  We saw each knight compete using horses and lances, swords, maces, shields, etc.  It was so much fun.

Evie cheered with such enthusiasm!

Evie looked and acted just like a princess.  She talked between each event and gave her cute comments about them.  I loved sitting next to her to hear them all.

Isn't she so cute?

Everything was amazing.  After each event of the tournament, the herald would announce the top five winners, giving them each points.  After the points were awarded the princess would toss them a rose for each point.  Each knight then moved to their colored section of spectators and tossed them into the crowd.  Only to the ladies of course!  Evie so wanted one, but alas, she did not have arms long enough and we were not sitting close enough for him to see her.  She had a hard time with that for a few minutes.  

I LOVED the jousting!  It was so amazing to see something in real life that I only had read about in books.  It was like watching the Arthurian legends come to life.  Evie doesn't know all that, but I sure do.

Whenever the bad guy came out Joseph's face got all serious and upset.  It was great to see him get so involved in the performances.

The events weren't always with the knights.  One of the events in the tournament was the royal horse trainer.  It was a woman who did tricks on a beautiful horse.  Another event was the royal falconer who encouraged the falcon to fly all across the whole arena.  It was amazing to have the bird fly so close to our heads that we could see it's feathers.

After the regular events of the tournament, the "story" continued with the green knight.  Finally, the prince showed up!  He was embattled and angry.  He claimed that the green knight had tried to have him killed on the way back to the castle we were all sitting in.  That's when the real battle began.  Several knights came out to fight on behalf of the prince and it was an amazing show!

Joe was very excited when the prince overcame the green knight.  Yahoo!

I was just excited everyone else was excited and having fun.  For a mom who plans in advance, the culmination of the planning being a success is exactly what she wants.  Yeah for moms!

At the end, the kids wanted a picture with the knights out front.  After the tournament, we also grabbed cute little souveniers.  Evie got a cute little princess, and Joe got a knight with a lance.  They were relatively inexpensive and Chris loves to spoil.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, my sweet EVELYNN!