Talk Like A Pirate Day - 2015

This is our 7th year of celebrating "Talk Like A Pirate Day" and it's become a BIG DEAL!  Costumes were pulled out the night before and I believe there was talk of sleeping in pirate gear. 

At 7:10am this morning I was woken by the middle children who whispered to me "Mama!  Wake up, it's PIRATE DAY"! 

This year we invited friends and upon arrival our little friend announced "I'm ready for the epic play date to begin"!

The first adventure began with a treasure hunt and this way cool map that my husband made.

The mountains are the house and the ships are setting sail from our back porch.  First my husband had all the kids sit at a table and review the map.  One little friend suggested we take a shortcut to get to the X but they discussed how that line in front of the X was a bottomless pit so we could not possibly go that way!

Next we tried to get everyone to walk the plank into the kiddie pool of water.  One little friend did not want to walk the plank so we made it optional but later she was doing it with the big kids.

"ARG!  I shall make my sisters walk the plank", said pirate Sam!

After the plank they wandered around looking for Dead Man's Cave.

Next we walked past Dead Man's Cave, where a skeleton from our Halloween collection was hanging in a shed.

Shipwreck cove was the driveway with "wrecked ships" as cars.

The Desert oasis was our bird bath.  We had planned a stop to drink water out of a cooler but ran out of time to set up a cooler and in hindsight the kids were getting insane with excitement at reaching the treasure.

We ended at the back of the house with a giant X over a window well cover that our oldest ripped out of the space and snatched the entire treasure box.  It took some convincing to get the entire box to the back porch for sorting treasure into everyone's buckets.

The treasure chest was found at Hobby Lobby for $12.95 and its paper mâché but it should last several years if we put it away.  We bought a few packs of paper money, spray painted gold nuggets and bought some cheap costume jewelry.  They loved it!  That's an understatement, they actually kinda obsessed over the stash.

Next we had lunch and calmed everyone down with a pirate movie.  This was semi-successful.  One child was too hyper to sit still so we took her for a walk, everyone else seemed happy to watch the movie but when we got back they were climbing everything in sight so we ended the movie and moved onto the treasure chest piñata. 

 

 

This part was hilarious, they wacked at it for a good five minutes before finally breaking it!  Afterwards we had snacks of homemade cookies, candy and root beer floats.

 

Finally, here is our youngest pirate.  She said Argh all day long!!