Crazy Crap #258: The part where April is peeping out all over

Those who have been reading my updates for at least a year know that here on Norwood, we have a hallowed springtime tradition. The Peeps Party. Long has it lived in the lore of the block since last year, when I held the first such event.

It's brilliant in its cunning simplicity:

- I buy a bunch of Peeps.
- I amass a bunch of craft supplies.
- I collect all my shoe boxes.
- I Scotchguard my entire house.
- I invite small children and others over to my house to create dioramas of their own design employing marshmallow peeps.
- Eamon looks gaily on.

And so it was that we held the Second Annual Peeps Party on April 17. We had planned to hold said event in the dining room, where it convened last year. But as the day dawned full and fair, we realized that with a few borrowed tables, we could move the festivities out into the back yard, where the children could bask in the early springtime sunshine, and I could avoid countless hours of sweeping up glitter and scraping adhesive-backed googly eyes off my hardwood floors.

In the now-vacated dining room, we set up snacks of all description, a large basin of wine bottles, and other assorted refreshments.

And thus it was that the day fulfilled the glory of celebrations past. The highlights:
- Somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 kids, with attached parents, descended up our yard for a whirlwind of creative outpouring.
- Neighbor Jim Casey helped feed the masses by bringing over an unsolicited roast, fresh of the grill. Delicious!
- We saw an array of themes in this year's displays, with an emphasis on:
* dinosaurs
* violence
* free-form

We were all tickled by a number of creative and accomplished displays, including the darling Peeps-aria pizza parlor, a peeps garden, a particularly bloody rendition of Robin Hood, a lifelike rendition of activism and civil disobedience, a bleak and heart-rending portrayal of the Civil War, a shooting gallery, and Eamon's cunning re-creation of our favorite karaoke bar, the Bong Ho.

Check all the glorious photos!

Festivities wrapped up around 6:30pm or so, and a small merry band retired to the Harris-Watts benches to bask in the glow of a firepit. For me, the spirit was willing for more festivities, but the body was weak, so I crashed in front an interminable "House" marathon until I lost myself in sleep's comforting embrace.

Excelsior Peeps!