Due to Titus’ death and sickness, we postponed celebrating International Talk Like a Pirate Day until last Thursday, when everyone was feeling well enough to participate. We started the day with patch-making. It’s great to have older kids who can help the younger kids, so I don’t have to help everyone. After that we read some books, and then Becca and Isaiah hid “gold coins” for the other kids to find. Isaiah made a map of our upstairs, and each kid had their own color of coins to find – each place marked on the map. All the kids had fun with their activities. We had a snack as a reward for the treasure hunt. Then Becca made M&M cookies with the boys, while the three middle kids did an art project. (I worked on meal prep stuff.) After lunch we had a normal afternoon. For the evening we had a spaghetti supper and the M&M cookies for dessert. Then the kids did dramatic readings of different picture books. Josh, Ezra, Micah, and I did a performance of Caps for Sale. The boys loved being the monkeys. Once the performances were over, we did our pirate dancing and watched a few informational videos about pirates.

In comparison to last year, this was a much better Pirate Day for me. Last year I rather resented all the work it was, especially when there was a lot of complaining and other issues to resolve. This year there was a lot more helping and everyone enjoyed their roles/responsibilities. It was a good day! Arrrrrr!