Timmy's Birthday Bash, and when Mike Got Last Place

This week Mike did more and more homework in hopes of finishing the semester with good grades. He is finishing up one of this finals, which is a paper documenting a project that he has been building all semester. His other project is 80% done, and since it is all due midway through this upcoming week he just has to get it done.

On Tuesday we all went to the Classic Fun Center to celebrate Timmy's Birthday. It was really his birthday a long time ago, but this was the first time that we could go, so we did it then. Timmy had a fun time. We went in the jungle part, the ball shooting part, the bounce houses, and lazer tag, and we also played carnival style games in order to win prizes. It was super hot in there because it was over 100 outside, but overall it was pretty fun.

On Wednesday the kids were invited to a sleepover at the Plastows house. They all had a fun time, but Boo decided at about 9:00 to come back home and sleep with us. It is too bad, because she was sad that all her siblings were not also coming home, but the other kids all had a fun time. Perhaps next time she will be brave enough to make it the whole time.

On Thursday the Plastows all came over and visited us while Aunt Amy was helping with Youth Conference. The kids are all good friends, so it is fun to have them over. Gideon had requested Bagel Faces for dinner out of the kids' cookbook he got for Christmas, so we had fun showing off our cool designs before eating them.

Saturday morning was a ward carnival that the youth put on as their Youth Conference service project. It was so much fun! There was a big crowd and tons of activities, as well as cotton candy and popcorn and root beer. Boo's favorite was a "Floating Friends" activity where you pulled a bath toy out of a wading pool and got a prize for it. She would pull a toy, get a mini container of Skittles, ask Mommy to open it and feed it to her, then go back for another. The other kids ran around and did a lot of activities and got bags of prizes. They had a wonderful time. Oh, the Plastow grandparents came and made balloon animals for everyone. Sara got a huge birthday hat instead of a little animal. Boo had to try multiple times to wait in line, but she loved the doggy she got; unfortunately, she dropped it under the stroller on the way home and it popped. Timmy shared his fish with her, and Rea shared her dog. It was a great activity.

Timmy adds that the kids got tickets which were used for buying popcorn and cotton candy.

For more than a year Jae (one of Mike's friends and co-worker from the church who we play games with fairly often) has been wanting to get together a game of Twilight Imperium. Now that we are all vaccinated we decided to schedule it. He wanted four players (but not any of his children, so we had to get two other players besides Mike and Jae. Alison doesn't like games like that at all, so we tried to get Caitlin and Sal. Sal was busy Saturday, but Caitlin could come, so we had three people. Mike Sr agreed to be the fourth, but then his work obligations prevented him from actually making it to the game, so we asked Dave to fill in. It was a bit of a Long shot because he always is busy on Saturdays, but we tried anyway. He couldn't do it, so we asked Loren. He is also rarely able to make game days, but this time he could, so we finally had four.

We planned to start at 10:00 am so that we could be done before dinner time (because that game takes a long time) we decided to get pizza for lunch, and let the kids play mostly unsupervised since there were so many of them. Alison was there too in case anything went wrong. We started setting up the game at about10:00 AM, and were done setting up by about 11:00. The first game round took until after lunch, but the game sped up after that. That being said, it still took until almost 10pm to finish the game and clean it up. By the beginning of the last round Caitlin was at 8 points, and everyone else was at 7 points (though Jae really had 6 points visible, he was holding on to a 1 point card, which he could reveal at any time).

Jae had the card that let him score as many cards as he could meet the requirements of, so Mike expected him to win, but the others seemed mostly content on getting their objectives met so that they could win. While they were working on their objectives Mike decided that his secret objective (which would have put him 1 point over the goal score) was pretty much impossible, so he had to stop Jae from winning instead on the off chance that the others couldn't win, and then Mike could win during the next turn instead. Mike's plan was audacious, but he pulled it off and denied Jae 4 points, but even despite that Jae won the game. The ending score was Jae: 12, Caitlin & Loren: 11, Mike: 9. It was a really fun. despite taking all day.

Rea has had a sore throat all week, and today Gideon woke up coughing and sneezing. We decided to keep him and Boo home from church; we debated Rea going, but she really wanted to, so we said as long as she wore her mask and washed her hands regularly, it would be OK. Mike stayed home with them so that Alison could sit with her Primary class; she discovered that Sacrament Meeting is surprisingly easy with only three school-aged kids. :)