Happy Lupercalia

We celebrated Lupercalia/Valentines Day with Latin Club on Friday. A bit late, but the candy was cheaper that way. 

Here Barbara is explaining the ancient custom in which young men run around hitting young girls with a dead animal. To make the girls more fertile. Actually, it seems to me like a practice that would have tended to encourage celibacy rather than snuggling, but what do I know? At any rate, Barbara brought some sort of animal pelt attached to a stick, and a couple of our boys had a chance to run around swinging it. There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm on both ends of the stick.

 They did better with the rest of the program. Everyone made nice cards (sentiments in Latin, of course), the food was excellent, and the games were very entertaining. And when we finished the day there was no blood on the carpet and everyone still had all their teeth. I call that a good party!

 (the ninja game. sort of like "statues," but with hitting instead of running)

 (And this was quite an exciting game! Red hot poker. Only, we played it as "red hot octopus." The kids held hands in a circle around the octopus and tried to push each other onto the octopus. Touch it and you are out. The octopus was actually ideal for this, since its tentacles waved nicely when someone hit it.)

The weather today was absolutely gorgeous, and Travis and I went hiking with my parents after church. 

Poor Travis. He keeps waiting for us to grow up. Actually, my mom showed great maturity today. We were walking down the trail and a woman stopped her and started carrying on about how she hoped she would still be hiking when she reached my mom's age! My mom just smiled sweetly and didn't whack her with her hiking stick. She is so good. (Actually, my mom always shows maturity. We keep waiting for it to rub off on us.)