One Sunday Evening

It's not every day you're chilling in the living room, having a nice Sunday evening beer, and someone comes running in with an urgent mission.  I have to commend myself on my awesome tuning-out-but-paying-attention skills because at that moment, I was aware of what my mission was.  Captain American and Hulk-Tinkerbell were using their Virginia Tech thunder sticks to save the lost treasure from Mordu (pronounced very Scottish/French by both kids, like Mowrdieu or Mowrduuh), the big ugly bear from Brave, which had taken over Thomas the Tank Engine's cargo only a few minutes earlier.  Our Thomas tent was still flattened in the entry to the living room, a casualty of the battle.

Mordu had moved through the house - Sebastian's room, Audrey's room, the bathroom, the hallway  The situation seemed to be more and more dire, with Sebastian stopping to ask if Audrey was Hulk-Tinkerbell or Thor-Tinkerbell (she was wearing her Tinkerbell pajama dress and TInkerbell Crocs), depending on whether Mordu should be Smashed or have a hammer thrown at his head (Sebastian knows better than to throw his shield).  He ran in to ask me to velcro his Iron Man costume and converse with the Jarvis voice on his helmet, to determine that they did, in fact, need to "Activate Countermeasures" or "Attimate Cowtoomissules!"  Audrey was impatient, and she ran back in, breathlessly yelling "OH NO!  Mowrdieu is in the tichen!"  Then both were off again with a screamed "AVENGERS, ASSEMBLE!" so I went back to my beer and the iPad.

It had been 10 minutes of steady fighting and screaming - Batman was called in, Princess Tiana joined the fight, and the kids even had to use a rocket at one point when Mordu got to Sebastian's bed.  They opened the back door when Mordu was attacking Madigan and they leaned out to scream to the neighborhood that our very confused dog needed to fight back.  At one point, Ultraman showed up and I was informed that he needed a Jello jiggler from the fridge because he has a hole in his mask for his mouth.  Actually, Ultraman needed two jigglers and Audrey would feed him one.  I told both kids that a hero who demands dessert is no hero at all, so they went to tell him and found Mordu in the closet.

"HULK!  HULK!"  That was my cue, since I was the big green guy at Halloween last year.
"Yes?"
"Here, put on your Hulk hand.  Mordu is in your bedroom and you need to SMASH him.  And use my  Spiderman glove so you can spin a web and trap Mordu.  Wait, I have to go find my other Spiderman glove, but Mordu is in your bedroom."

I dutifully suited up, a 5-year-old Spiderman glove on one hand, a big foam Hulk hand on the other.  This was not a moment I could sit out, no matter how many dessert-demanding invisible superheroes arrived to help.  Sebastian came back with the other Spiderman glove, and we both looked at my bedecked hands, trying to figure out how to make a third glove work.  Audrey ran in, panted "MOWRDIEUUUUUU!" and, in unison, we yelled "AVENGERS, ASSEMBLE!!!!!" and ran down the hall to fight that huge invisible beast.

And that's where my husband found us, emerging from his woodshop with a newly turned Christmas ornament in hand.  Aaron stopped for a second, surveyed the scene, then accompanied us all to the bedroom, where he told me all about the new project while I shot invisible webs out of my wrist and punched a Hulk hand in the same direction Sebastian was swinging his shield and Audrey was waving her inflatable thunder stick.

I don't know if we got Mordu (actually, we didn't - he was somehow hiding on the ceiling fan when we returned to the living room), but I saw myself in the mirror putting up a very active fight.  Aaron placed the ornament with his other projects and went back into the woodshop without a word.

So yeah, that's what happened in my house when I sat down to chill and enjoy a single Sunday evening beer.