The Castle

Teresa has been begging to go to the big castle (Medieval Times) at the mall here for the past few months. Basically it's dinner and a show with knights and horses and princesses and all that stuff. Marc and I went last year with some friends, and as much as I thought T would like it I was also worried because it can get very loud. Teresa has a bit of an issue with being able to handle loud noises (she generally has to cover her ears before we can flush the toilet in public restrooms), so I've been hesitant to take her. BUT she has been doing better with that, and had been really, really interested in going for several months, so we decided we would make it her main birthday present this year. At first I was just going to have Marc take her on a little daddy-daughter date, but we got a good deal on Living Social, so we all went. I'm so glad we did, because Nora was absolutely enamored with it and had such a blast, she was so cute. She is super in to horses, and the very first thing they did was bring out a bunch of dancing/performing horses and she was transfixed watching them and breathily saying "oh, wow" over and over.

They were so excited all day waiting to find out what the big surprise was.

When you go in, the color of your crown indicates which knight you are supposed to be cheering for, so we were in the blue knight's section. 

T was pretty thrilled with our knight. Apparently Teresa already has a 'type' because she thought he was super handsome, and he looked just like our mailman. Now that I think about it, he might actually have been our mailman...seriously, they even had the same facial hair.

 They did a bunch of cool tricks with their horses, and every now and then each knight would throw some flowers in to the crowd. T really, really wanted a flower from him, every time he came over she would cheer her little heart out, and was getting so disappointed each time he didn't throw her one. And then FINALLY each knight was given a sash to present to someone in their section as queen of the tournament and he rode right over and gave it to Teresa. 

That's him holding his lance out to her to take it above. She was so thrilled, it was really sweet, she just couldn't believe it, it totally made her night. 

There's a storyline to the whole thing, and the knights all end up fighting each other at the end, using their lances, then swords/axes/maces, etc. Our knight beat the first guy he fought, and then lost to the second one. When he got "stabbed" and fell down Teresa was legitimately horrified, and almost started crying. Luckily he got up pretty quickly.

Nora started to wilt towards the end. She was fighting off a bit of a fever thanks to those darn two-year-old molars.

T wanted a picture with the lion on the way out. That's her queen sash she's holding on to. It's definitely featured heavily into her pretend play since we've been home. 

When we were tucking her in to bed that night she said "Guys, that was the best-est surprise in the whole world!".