"Thanks for playing! Way to go!"

This morning I thought it would be a good idea to make some masks with Opeie. I wanted to keep him Occupied in the house seeing as it's so cold and wet outside and he's not been feeling great since the weekend. I also wanted to keep his mind off the TV, I'd had my fill of Go Diego Go this morning. I asked Opeie what masks he wanted to make? As always he knew exactly what he wanted, Yoshi from super Mario with his long tongue sticking out for him and Mario for me, no problem.

The coloured card, scissors and glue came out and we sat down together to be creative. About 10 minutes in though Mrs M handed him a snack and he instantly lost interest so I continued alone and made a very quick Yoshi mask with sticky out tongue as requested.

As soon as Opeie saw the mask he got his creative mojo back and reached for his scissors. Now if you've ever tried to do cutting with young children you'll know that they need a lot of help so sadly no photos of us in creative mode. I held the paper and moved it round as he snipped away. Some of the pieces came out how we wanted and some of them were a little bit more unique, but the finished Mario mask came out so much better and had much more character than the mask I had made.

And that was our morning, now to fill the afternoon.

A couple of quick craft activities to fill the morning. Painitng eggs and making masks.

Because of the great weather we have hardly done any craft activities over the last few weeks, none of us really want to be cooped up indoors, i know i could do it outside but lets be honest its never going to win over a trampoline and a good old fashioned ball. yesterday though Opeie was adamant that he wanted to stay in and colour for the morning so i went hunting through the boys craft boxes. back at Easter time we had brought lots of plain polystyrene eggs, designed and painted a few but didn't end up doing anything with them, there were plenty left over so i got them out for Opeie so we could continue our decorating, still with no idea what we are going to do with them.

We've now ended up with a big box of decorated eggs to play with which I'm sure Seth will find a use for at some point. As Opeie scribbled away at his eggs he gave me clear directions as to which characters he wanted me to create for him...

Opeie soon got bored of colouring eggs and said 'scissors', while pottering round Ikea last week Mrs M picked up a big pack of coloured card for the boys so seeing as Opeie was in a foreman style craft mood dishing out his character requests we started chopping away at the paper to create some masks and Opeie did an excellent job of gluing all the pieces together, in the words of that rather annoying children's program 'wonder pets' that he likes so much, "whats going to work? Teamwork!".

"Virtue has a veil, vice a mask."

At some point in the day, pretty much every day the masks will be on in our house, we love role play especially if it means that Seth gets to have a bit of a scrap. Its great being able to just throw one on and act like a child for an hour or so (not that i usually act like a grown up).

After seeing the Avengers movie i felt it a necessity to own all the masks, I'm a Captain America kind of guy, Seth will nearly always go for Thor and Opeie well need i say it? he's a Spider-Man boy through and through. I decided to write this post last week, i had been looking for the Hulk mask with the light up gamma eyes for quite some time but they were going for stupid money on eBay but while we were in TK Maxx both me and Mrs M spotted one at the same time for a mere fiver. I walked in Seth's room earlier to find Mrs M looking very fetching in it and a hulk costume. Hot!!!

 

Seth loves taking the Masks and accessories down the park so that we can run about being the avengers etc. We do get some funny looks but thankfully none of us care less. Its all about the boys and if their happy then were happy. Theyve always got a smile on their faces.

Its not all about marvel though, sometimes we get an unpleasant visit from the Sith Lord himself he generally potters round the house harassing Opeie. I'm still looking to get hold of a Boba Fett mask like the Vader one as we have the blaster so it would be rude not to.

I don't much like living in the real world, i am happiest playing with the boys in our super hero fantasy land. Ive come in to contact with all manner of villainous people in my life and it seems that a lot of people we me eet these days are wearing some form of mask meant to serve as a decoy for what they are really like. Thankfully the only masks we wear in our house are the Super hero kind. We are a genuinely happy family.