By Beth
I've always loved pirates. The attitude, the danger, the clothes. One of my favorite movies/books growing up was Treasure Island (the movie had a very young Christian Bale in it, I adored him before he was cool). I watched it over and over and could probably still quote most of it. I also love raw vegetables. Given the choice between dessert and veggies, nine times out of ten I'll choose veggies. Knowing this about myself, it was no surprise that the Veggie Tales Pirates Who Don't Do Anything was such a big hit with me. I don't know that Lara shares my love of veggies, but I know she loves pirates, at least one that is.
One of our favorite Veggie Tales songs is "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything:"
Among the things the pirates in the song don't do is "I've never painted daisies on a big, red, rubber ball." At some point along the way Lara and I were being rather silly and looking for cheaper things to do during the Year of the Birthday, painting daisies was added. We also got "go to Boston in the fall" from that song ("I've never been to Boston in the fall" ends each verse) which will take place this fall since health issues prevented us from going last fall. Lara nixed sniffing stinkbugs, bathing in yogurt, throwing mashed potatoes up against the wall and licking spark plugs. Go figure.
I had seen big, red, rubber balls in Target before we made the list but sensing they were in danger of being painted, they all fled the state. Luckily we found some hiding out at a dollar store near our friend Kate's beach house in Delaware. I believe the cashier was slightly disturbed by how happy we were to find them and got us through the line quickly. We planned to paint them the next time Lara came to my house since I have tons of crafty stuff.
The actual painting of the daisies isn't too exciting to write about. Lara chose the "each flower is unique" look while I went for traditional daisies. My kids thought we were nuts. OK, they've thought that for years (my daughter has a hard time with the fact that Mommy still has sleepovers with Aunt Lara) this just further cemented this thought in their heads. We made Kara take pictures. "Pretend you're painting!" She was a very demanding photographer. When it was all over, our balls sat in bowls on the dining room table and were guarded fiercely so the cats would not knock them over and cause little daisy patterns to stick to the floor.
The balls took forever to dry and they had to live in my kitchen bathroom for a time since I could not guard them 24/7. Since the painting, I know Lara's ball has been murdered by the fiend, Toby. My ball remains ball-ish despite being sat on by my brother who thought it was a chair (this is why I was the one in the gifted program at school and he was not). I look forward to our next Veggie Tale adventure this fall, which will most likely be much more exciting than painting daisies on a big, red, rubber ball.