Why Cosplay?

Once a year for the past few years, at least a few of our family have attended either Denver Comic Con or StarFest. It's hard to explain if you've never been to one, but it's basically a convention for geeks and nerds and fans of all sorts. If you're into sci-fi (books or movies), super heroes, fantasy, table top games, comic books, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek, programming robots, building models, meeting actors from TV shows, listening to panel discussions on how to write Steam Punk, attending workshops on how to draw manga or apply monster makeup for horror movies, there's something for everyone (okay, maybe not everyone . . . but you get my point: it's more than just comic books).

One of my favorite parts is Cosplay (playing dress up). People dress up as characters from books or movies or TV shows or web comics, etc. I love looking at the costumes. The time and effort some people put into creating a costume and/or applying makeup is impressive. Take this "Groot" for example:

I first tried wearing a costume to a convention mainly to bond with my daughter. I mean, look at a couple of the amazing costumes she has made:

Once there, I realized how much more fun it is when I'm in costume! You get some interesting looks walking down the streets of Denver! 

At the Con, I keep my eye out for others dressed as my same character and we have fun comparing costumes. One year John and I dressed as Kaylee and Jayne from "Firefly" - I found two other Kaylees and John found two other Jaynes (actually, I think he saw about 10, but we only got a picture with 2):

My favorite thing about Cosplay is creating the costume. I have always loved arts and crafts, and I rarely get the opportunity to play with my art supplies. Choosing a character, designing a costume, sewing bits of it, painting other parts, making jewelry and accessories, . . . it all appeals to my inner artist.

This year, I'm taking Helene and her friend Becca to StarFest. The girls decided to be campers from Camp Half-Blood (the Greek demigod camp in the Percy Jackson books). So I decided to be Athena to go with their theme. Here are a couple of images I found that I wanted to model my costume after:

The first part of the fun is hitting the 2nd hand stores and craft stores and trying to envision what I can make without spending a fortune. I wanted my Athena to have some battle armor on - at least a breastplate. Do you know how hard it is to find breastplate armor for women (that isn't totally revealing, anyway)? So I made my own, using a $1.99 corset from Goodwill.

I knew I could find a disembodied baby doll face at Hobby Lobby. How did I know that?? Kinda creepy, but I figured that plus some rubber snakes would make a good Medusa head (which Athena wears on her armor).

Figuring out how to make this look more like armor:

 Trying the breastplate armor on over my sheet (Greek peplos) to see if this will work:

 Figuring out how to make the snakes less floppy:

And an obstacle I didn't expect: I bought the corset large, knowing it would have to go over my toga/peplos. I did not account for how much stretchiness would go away once I painted it! So I found these little fasteners to extend the existing fasteners and give me a little more breathing room:

It's all these little challenges that make creating the costume even more fun.

Another fun part of the process: getting to show off the final product!

Easter Egg Hunt 2017

Our kids are getting older, but I'm not quite ready to abandon the egg hunt, so we took it up a notch this year. The kids were provided with clues that led them to their jackets, then their water bottles, then their shoes. . . A filled plastic egg and another clue was in each of those locations, and they were instructed to gather all of those things in their bags as they went along.

The clue in their shoes led them to the cabin and instructed them to look for Ernie (the elk skull hanging in our cabin). Those are Easter eggs in his eye sockets.

Ernie's clue led them to the tree house, and that final clue led them to the lake. This was our way to sneak in a little hike! The Easter bunny had dropped a few eggs along the trail. See if you can find the blue egg in this picture:

Best of all, the Easter Bunny had left Easter baskets at the lake, and the Mama Easter Bunny had a picnic lunch with her.

Greta had the happiest Easter ever:

My Review of the Great Wolf Lodge, Colorado Springs

We spent a couple of nights at the new Great Wolf Lodge over spring break. We also stayed at the GWL in Dallas a few years ago, so I will make a few comparisons to that. Overall it was fun, and I recommend it. Just a few tips and things to be aware of:

Arrival/Check-In:
They say if you check in at 4:00, your room will be ready. This is highly unlikely. They were still cleaning rooms and trying to get them ready for guests past 5:00 pm on the day we arrived. The lobby was full of families, luggage, and screaming toddlers. My recommendation is arrive early (officially you can arrive as early as 1:00, but the manager said they would let people in even earlier to avoid big lines at 1:00). Leave your luggage in the car. Bring in a bag of swim stuff. You check in at the front desk, then head to the water park and play until you eventually get a text notifying you that your room is ready. There are lockers in the water park area and several places to eat (without even needing to change clothes). When you check in, you get a wrist band that acts as your room key and can have charging capabilities, if you want. It's nice not having to carry around a key or wallet or anything while you're playing.

Rooms:
You can see all the options on the website. In Dallas, we stayed in one of the themed rooms. It has a layout like this:

I thought our kids were too old for the theme this time, so I got a standard room (layout below). The advantage that I now see to the themed room is that the kids' bunk beds are almost in their own separate room. There's no closable door to their area, but it's almost entirely walled in and provides parents with a little more privacy and less noise at night (as opposed to having everyone in the same big room, listening to each other toss and turn).

The rooms are new and clean and spacious enough. There were adequate outlets and USB ports in the nightstand. 

Complaints: 1)The beds are uncomfortable and the pillows are too big (John was calling me the princess & the pea for feeling this way, so maybe I'm overly sensitive, but I would at least bring my own pillows next time.) 2)The walls are thin; we were awakened by a crying baby at 3am. Bring earplugs. 3)The bathroom does not have enough places to hang wet swimsuits and towels. I would recommend bringing suction cup hooks. Our bathroom had one double hook on the door and one small towel rack. That's it. Not even one of those retractable clothes lines in the shower. We had to take our swimsuits off of the shower rod every time someone wanted to shower.

Activities:

There are special passes available that include activities. We didn't do that. The water park is included, and we did a couple of extra activities at an extra cost. 

The Water Park is great. It was not as big as the one in Dallas. No lazy river. But it was also less crowded feeling than Dallas, so that was nice. Lines were not too long for rides, especially in the morning. There are several big water slides of different types (some scary, some just fun and relaxing), a wave pool, and a play area in the middle where you can climb, shoot water at each other, and so on.

Mini-Golf is $7/person. It's a small 9-hole course, but fun.

John and Helene both enjoyed the Ropes Course. I think it cost $13/person.

There was an arcade and several other activities available that we did not do. The kids did MagiQuest a few years ago in Dallas and loved it. I think it's worth the money if your kids are old enough to let them run around the hotel on their own. It's around $30 because you have to buy a wand and activate it.

Food:
There are several restaurants in the GWL. We didn't try all of them; we went out to dinner both nights just to get out of the hotel for a while. We had breakfast included in our stay one morning, and it was great! A big breakfast buffet with lots of fresh fruit, oatmeal, grits, waffles, bacon, sausage, eggs, potatoes, good coffee, ... All the usual hotel stuff, but much better quality food than the typical (Hampton Inn level) hotel buffet.
The next morning we had to leave pretty early, so we got breakfast sandwiches at the Dunkin' Donuts (in the GWL), which opens at 6:30.
We had lunch at the Barnwood restaurant in the GWL, and it was surprisingly good quality, locally sourced, freshly prepared food:

The Barnwood also has happy hour (1/2 price drinks and appetizers) every day from 3-5:30, so we took advantage of that, too.

It was a fun staycation. I recommend it if you can get a good deal. The best option I found was to book at least 60 days in advance, so you can take advantage of the Early Saver deal (40-50% off). https://www.greatwolf.com/colorado-springs/deals