Uncle Nathan's Big Surprise

Want to know how a 25-year-old man cemented the title of "Best Uncle Ever"? You might think that getting all four of his nephews (plus sister, brother-in-law, and father) into Disney Land for free might do it. I do believe that would have been enough. Nate being Nate, however, prescribes to the adage: Go big or go home. Getting the boys into Disney wasn't enough for him. No, no...he had to do--more.

Did you know that Disney has a Jedi Academy? The Jedi Master in brown may or may not be a friend of Nate's. How freakishly awesome is that?

Turns out, they pull kids right out of the crowd to train in the ways of the Jedi. Sam, Jake, and Zander were all picked. Here is Jake at the beginning of training. He is quite serious.

That kid in the bottom left corner? You may be able to figure out by his hair that it's Zander. He's supposed to be listening to the lesson but he spent some serious time trying to attach the light saber to his shorts.

This came back to bite him in the butt a little later. He was the (only) recipient of (repeated) remedial Jedi training throughout the lesson.

Jake was in heaven. The smiles on all three boys' faces during instruction were priceless. The kids (there were around 20 in all) did great, following the directions of the Master Jedi and copying their every move. I really thought we were going to go home and hear about nothing but the training they were able to do, the moves they had learned...

...but I was so wrong. We heard about a lot more than that! Can you believe that Darth Vader came right out of the ground?! This event was made 1000 times better for the simple fact that we had no idea it was going to happen! So incredible!

Do you remember, though, how I mentioned that Zander was just a wee bit on the overwhelmed side all day? At the appearance of Darth Vader, we started watching Master Z for signs of cracking. He was nervous but the crack didn't actually happen until the next act...I have to say, I might have cracked too.

Don't worry. Nate's friend pulled Zander from the group right away and brought him back to us. He had a blast with the training but by then was fully ready to return to the safety of the 2-inch space between mom and dad. (I kid. He was fine as soon as he knew he didn't have to fight them. That doesn't sound as funny though, does it? Oh well. Such is life.)

Here's Jake being confronted by Darth Vader. "Join me on the dark side, young Jedi."

Jake wasn't interested. Poor Darth Vader. Jake held his own. He was also able to fight Darth Maul but I didn't get any decent pictures of that. (Sam fought Darth Maul as well. I did not have a good angle to take pictures of Sam during this whole thing; my dad took several great ones. I was going to take them off his Facebook page but couldn't get it figured out.)

The two Darths fought the children--er, I mean Jedi--and then retreated after being soundly defeated. Not after issuing several dire sounding, empty threats, of course. We all know how those bad guys roll.

There was a graduation ceremony after the great fight but there are too many identifiable children in the shot to post it here. All three boys have a neat little certificate to go with their memories of the day, though. So much fun! And there you have it. How one man became the World's Best Uncle in the course of a single day! How often do kids get to live out their dreams like this? So neat!