Say cheese, padawans

In our last post, I put up a picture from the Ottawa Geek Market, an event held October 14th at the Nepean Sportsplex. I had taken the older kids to a comic book store once almost a year ago but the whole thing was kind of lost on them. Since then, they have REALLY gotten into Star Wars, Batman and the Avengers via the corresponding lines of Lego toys (no, they have not seen any of the movies). They have catalogues with these figures in them, underwear bearing their likenesses, they recognize the characters on cereal boxes and other merchandise... When Holly brought up the idea of going to this event (that would have a pile of vendors hawking all sort of geeky stuff), I thought 1) the kids' minds are going to explode and 2) the kids are probably going to see some things that they might not be ready for (e.g. guns, weapons, skimpy clothing). We figured it wouldn't be over the top and that the kids could probably handle whatever they'd see.

So we arrive at the event, pay for our tickets and go inside. It's busy and a little cramped. The first thing the kids see are a pair of guys dressed in full Klingon gear. They handled that OK, but were pretty unsure of what was going on. We hook a right, walk 10 steps and find ourselves at a table hosted by the 501st Canadian Garrison (I'm not going to get into the details of who these guys are...just follow the link. Although I will mention that we've now seen them in two Ottawa Santa Claus parades:)) In conjunction with the Make a Wish Foundation, the Garrison was offering pictures (by donation) with some of their members who were onsite. Holly and I looked at one another and thought "This would be cool for the kids! Right?" So we paid and two of the gentlemen led Max and Leo over to where the pictures are taken. Both boys were kind of in awe/stunned until the )*#&%ing Stormtrooper gave Max his gun. It was like one of those slow-mo "Noooooooooooooooooo" movie sequences. Our jaws drop in slow-mo while Max's grin gets Cheshire-wide and his eyes fixate on the blaster...

Here's the picture:

(Holly adds: One funny thing about the boys' current fascination with guns is that they actually call them "G-U-N-S's". Then they spell it out in plural and use that for the singular - "Max has a G-U-N-S.". Whenever we look at the Playmobil or LEGO catalogues, they talk about which sets have "G-U-N-Ss" that would have to be taken away if they came into the house. Obviously, spelling things out wasn't going to work forever but I thought we had a bit more time.) On a different note, the boys' Auntie Laramie and I were enrolled in a board game tournament later in the day (a triple-shot of Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan) and we tied for first! I have a picture but have to dig it off of Holly's phone - we won some gift certificates and used them to buy a couple of new games for us or for our kids when they get old enough to try to take down Holly (the Lord of all strategy games). All in all, it was a strange but great day.