"Come see the Forces of Darkness"

So, my friend C sent the girls a completely awesome Christmas present. It's the CherryBlossom Marketplace or something like that, and I've yearned for it (or anything in the whole line actually) for quite a while and have been very unfulfilled. Well, no longer! It arrived in a fear-inducing sized box which thankfully was more bark than bite, and the girls almost passed out from excitement when they saw the front of the actual box. Which meant that I had some unnecessary help putting the thing together.

Side tangent to inquire why I am always the one who puts the stuff together? I think someone is taking advantage of my need to control the process.

Anyway, despite the help I got it put together (which was a fascinating process- you end up kind of zipping the whole thing up in a slipcover) and out on the lanai it went, at least until we do some rearranging inside. The girls happily played out there until it got dark. I was cooking dinner and missed the whole "sun going down" thing, but suddenly a panicked sounding Elizabeth sprinted into the house shouting "Come see the forces of darkness! Come see!" Apparently, while to me the corner we had stashed the "ice cream store", as they were calling it, looked like this:


To Elizabeth it looked more like this:

We later determined she was actually saying "Forest of Darkness", which is a quote from the Backyardigans and involves singing a song that goes "Gotta be brave, gotta be brave, gotta be brave in the cave".

It was lot more fun when I was out on the lanai looking for the "forces" of darkness.