laying seige to the woods...

This afternoon, the boys and I loaded the truck with three swords, two shields, a plastic shotgun, a couple of chocolate bars and a thermos of coffee and headed into the woods on an expedition.

Grayson the Brave served as our trail guide, having once before ventured into these woods and successfully slain a dragon. He led us deep into the forest to find a huge oak tree laying toppled into the river.

It should be noted that there were no enemies in sight, but we thrashed about with our swords just in case they were cloaked with invisibility.


Zion the Lionhearted also made the trek. He is shown here in classic attack stance. Careful observers will recognize his camo pants and accompanying ninja-like sandles. The following is a verbatim transcript of part of our conversation.

Grayson: Look - that's goldenrod. And that's thistle.

Jackson: How do you know all this stuff, Gray?

Zion: He weads. Books. Awot.

Sir Jackson ventured to the far end of the log for this photo. He appears quite brave, having left his weaponry on the bank of the river. We had stopped here for a chocolate break - and rest assured, coffee never tasted so good as it did in the open air, surrounded by marvelous comrades such as these.

A great time was had by all, with the possible exception of the mountain biker who raced up onto our troup head-on. The look of shock on his face to find three boys and a grown man stomping through the woods, whacking the brush and talking about an invasion, was priceless.

There are not many better ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.