The Wand Chooses the Wizard

This is from clear back in July--I can't believe it's been that long since I've posted!

One thing I have passed on (sometimes by force) to my kids is my love of good movies.  We especially love watching shows the whole family can enjoy, so every summer we have a movie marathon of some kind in the evenings--it gives all of us something to look forward to, and we get to plan on hanging out together in the evenings.  This year it was Harry Potter, and it took us pretty much the entire summer to cover the series (don't worry--we skipped some of the scarier scenes :).  These kids are now huge fans of the series, the spells, the costumes, the Lego Harry Potter app--you name it.  Lydia re-read the whole series this summer, and Jacob is on book 3.  Eleni even started book 1, but fizzled out after a while (I asked her what part she was on, and she said, "I don't know.  I can't understand a lot of the words . . .").

Seth, who can make/fix anything, got the idea to make Harry Potter wands out of dowels and wood stain.  I think he was sick of finding chopsticks around the house and seeing the kids almost take each other's eyes out with them.

It was a great idea, and the kids had a good time sanding their wands.

Evie enjoyed watching from the truck.

 A couple of days later, we decided to take our new wands out for a trial run.  We drove up the mountain behind our new house, all of us piled in the back of the truck . . .

 . . . and found the perfect battleground for a wizard duel.

 Seth and the kids hiked up a ways and pretended to battle while Evie did her best to fall off rocks.

 Beautiful views and sunsets around here!

 Expelliarmus!

 Some tired witches & wizards . . .

Here's Gabe showing off his lightning scar wand.  Three guesses what he's going to be for Halloween . . .