knight of the pizza [box]

Oliver's most enduring obsession to date is with knights. Whilst with Nana and Grandad in Colchester, our collective brain fostered the synergy necessary to sustain Oli's obsession and fuel it with exciting twists and turns. One of the most fun projects came out of a pizza box. Knights need things like swords and shields, but 9 out of 10 parents and grandparents do not want them to actually be weapons. (Have you ever been struck with one of those plastic swords? Have you fallen on a wooden shield? Watch out vampires!) So, on the second day in Colchester we toured round Colchester castle. We walked out with two foam swords (Who could have just one? It would have been swordmaster and his family, the bloody pulp.) Our budding knight was happy with this situation until he realized he had no shield. For a couple of days he carried around papa's backpack or his neck pillow from the plane. Then we hit upon it: how about using some empty pizza boxes? Grandad made fantastic shields whilst we were away in London. And he bravely fenced with Oliver for hours during the rest of the trip.
Alas, said shields could neither travel nor be shipped, so we set our sights on a duplicate, albeit inferior, set to be made with boxes from Goleta pizza (not so inferior!). We learned a few lessons from grandad: rounded bottom and brad fasteners plus packing tape for handles. The end products are nowhere near as cool as grandad's but they sure do get used a lot.
Whilst in Germany, Krista and Oliver told a three hour story about "The Knight of the Pizza." Though neither remembers more than vague details at this point, it entertained them both through dinner, metro-ing, walking, and hang-out time at home. I'm pretty sure there was a lot of traveling, some meeting up with friends, quite a bit of eating or sampling food, and not very much use of the swords and shields after all. Just the way we like it!