What do you get when you combine two teens, two pre-teens, two boxes of large glowsticks, a nighttime backyard, and a dad with an expensive camera that can do extremely long exposure times?

This. 

Started out as glowstick waving and lightsaber fights, 

Devolved into glowstick-throwing fight, 

Then (thanks to brother managing to deflect glowsticks with his arms and me getting an idea) into throwing glowsticks for someone with a lightsaber to try and deflect, 

Then finally into a lightsaber fight while being pelted with glowsticks. 

Lemme tell ya, a glowstick that’s five inches long and half an inch wide makes a very loud sound when it bounces off the bicycle helmet you’re wearing. 

Today I learned that I can throw marginally better than my brothers can. This is still not well, none of us are athletic. I can do a less-than-terrible job of deflecting glowsticks, too, and I suspect we all could have done better if we’d been better at aiming the glowsticks actually at each other. 

[Images: various squiggles of colorful light against a dark outdoor area, caused by rapidly moving glowsticks and glowing toy lightsabers. Vague, transparent shades of moving people are visible in some.]