Pirate-y Stuff (a guest post by Zoë)

May 22 (a day no one was sick):

We went to Florida for a week. In that time, Miriam made a bonnet [knit head kerchief], that on the way there [to the Pirate and Treasure Museum], she said she felt like a pirate in the bonnet. 

Later, we made up the nickname Smee-me. Like a pirate. 

Smee-me [was wearing] pirate clothes* when we called her Smee-me, and she hated it!!!! Like, literally! She said, I quote, “I said I felt like a pirate! I don’t anymore!”

*What I mean is that she was wearing a striped shirt and black pants. Pirate clothes. See???



Anyway, we got to go to the pirate museum at Florida, AND got to fire a REAL cannon! I mean, who even lets KIDS fire cannons? The coolest thing I did though, was fire a cannon! It was CRAZY! It wasn’t a real cannon, [but it was still pretty cool. We put a lighting stick to the touch hole and held it there until *BOOM!* Phoebe was scared of it]. My favorite part of the pirate museum was probably firing a cannon. It was awesome!

ANYWAY, “Smee-me” tried everything to stop us from calling her Smee-me, but nothing worked! She was DOOMED to the “HORRIBLE” fate of being called “Smee-me”! Muah-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!

[Here she is standing near the entrance; Mom tried to get a picture of her with a whole family that walked in dressed as pirates...on purpose...but the family walked past too quickly.]

At the pirate museum, we also got to see Captain Jack Sparrow’s sword, and a cursed coin! It was WILD there, W-I-L-D! The pirate museum gave out stickers that had a silly skull and crossbones☠️ on them. It was so fun! And very, very, cool. [Mom didn't get a picture of Captain Jack Sparrow's sword, but she did take a picture of this pirate baseball uniform from the movie Hook. This room was all about the stories people have made up involving pirates. The other parts of the museum were based on history].

We watched three Pirates of the Caribbean [movies] while we were in Florida. We had a WONDERFUL time in Florida. I have so many other things to tell you, but those are stories for another time.

When we got home [to Georgia], the so-called “Smee-me” made yet another bonnet [head kerchief]; flowery this time. [She is warming up to the nickname. When we were driving around and she was still accidentally dressed like a pirate, she ordered Benjamin to do something (I can't remember what) and he said, "Ay-ay, Captain Smee-me!" but I think that's silly because Smee wasn't a captain at all. So I said, "Smee-me's not a captain! Smee-me should be swabbing the decks!" Miriam didn't like the idea of swabbing the decks as much as being a captain, but either way she gets to be Smee-me].

[Here are some fun pictures Mom took from around the museum. I guess no one thought to bring out the actual camera; these are all from Mom's cell phone.]

[They had some fun pull-out drawers for kids to discover "secret" exhibits. These were fun to find.]

[We liked learning about different pirate time periods on these computer consoles.]

[We got to man the helm, raise the colours, fire cannons (I already talked about that!) and do all sorts of cool pirate-y things. Here I am at the helm:]

[And here's Alexander raising the flag:]

[There was a lot of spooky stuff around. Benjamin found a skeleton in a closet. And there was a guy that was left in a cage to be pecked at by crows and things. There were a lot of mean punishments for pirates that were basically like torture!]

[We got to touch some cool things, like this corner of an old pirate's chest. I think it was like 200 years old or even more!]

[They also just had cannon balls and things stuck in the walls of the museums that we could touch. They had some shells and treasure, as well. Even human skulls! But I don't think the skulls or the treasure were real.]

[Here's Phoebe and Dad looking at some real pirate treasure. They have it in a case, so I'm pretty sure it's real. That's how I know the stuff sitting out isn't real because why would you just have real treasure sitting out? You wouldn't! People would steal it. Some of the treasure in the case were some really thin gold coins and jewelry that had tiny little skulls carved into the beads. Speaking of that, pirates weren't always good at drawing skulls sometimes. We saw some pirate flags that look more silly than scary, but they were real flags that people were actually afraid of. There just weren't a lot of details that they used. But some of the flags were pretty cool and probably really did make people scared.]

[And here's Rachel and Grandpa looking at something. See the cool pirate's chest behind them?]

[Here's Phoebe giving Alexander a sneak-attack hug. She really likes giving people hugs and will chase around the neighbour kids trying to give them hugs. Some of them like it and some of them really don't. Phoebe usually likes hugs but sometimes Mom says we touch her too much and it makes her angry. But it can be hard to tell when she wants hugs (usually) and when she doesn't (rarely) so I don't know what to do about that. But Mom really doesn't like it when she screams so we have to "mind her cues," even though Phoebe isn't great at minding anyone else's cues and hugs them whether they want to be hugged or not.]

[Mom helped me write everything in square brackets because she said I needed more details and things. But I typed everything that isn't in square brackets. And it was a lot. I printed it out and made a book out of it with a pirate flag and everything. I loved, loved, loved the pirate museum! Especially seeing Captain Sparrow's sword. When I saw it I definitely thought that meant that Pirates of the Caribbean was a real-life story and that Captain Jack Sparrow was a real person! But then mom explained that the exhibit we were in was all about made-up stories about pirates. So that was a little disappointing, but it was still cool to learn about pirates and see artifacts and things from the past, and that we got to see some cool movie props and things as well.]