Parentheticals

Gideon became a meerkat this week. He can crawl around, stand up on his two legs (without any support), and then squat back down to crawling all by himself. He seems to be closer to walking than he was before, and his balance is getting much better. This week Sara, Rea, and Timmy all drew all over their faces. It took quite a lot of scrubbing to get it all off. Perhaps this will be a learning experience for them. They also carved some pumpkins. We are not sure what they were supposed to look like, but they are pretty scary. On Thursday Rea invited some friends over for a Halloween party. It was supposed to be a costume party, but no-one showed up in costumes since they all cam straight from school. They cut corn tortillas in the shape of pumpkins and coated them with orange oil, and toasted them into chips. Rea was very excited about this recipe. Other than that they mostly played outside. It was Alison's type of party. Alison and Mike have been dreaming of making an onsen ...

Firstly: the Saturday after Halloween (the first) is the date we have picked for our annual Halloween RPG. We will be starting at 10:00 AM. Anyone who wants to come is invited. The kids can exchange candy if they want to (The grandparents can come and chat if they want to, or play with the kids). If we get a lot of kids RSVP'd we will hire a babysitter to take them on a walk or something. We will provide chili and cornbread (both recipes are coincidentally GF). Please RSVP if you want to come. The RPG will be vaguely spooky. This week Alison was in charge of Rea's prieschool. It was a farm theme (apparently our house is very well equipped for that (weird, huh)). The kids loved picking tomatoes and feeding the goats. Rea was very happy with preschool at her house. This coming week is our fall break, so Alison has some more time to prepare things for next week's preschool. On Wednesday was Rea's fourth Birthday. She got four gifts for whatever reason. One was a chair ...

I just started working on a new game about Easter Island. As I was playing a solo game (testing it out) Andrea asked to join in. I explained to her the general concept (these are your guys, they can get food and cut down trees and dig up rocks. you can only get these fish because they are closer to the island, and these ones are in the deep water.) After my explanation she said: "This guy will get fish and this guy will make bacon, and this guy will cut down a tree to make a canoe." I hadn't told her that there were canoes in the game, but apparently that was the reason for cutting down trees in her book. She is very smart. She also knew that killing a pig got you bacon. We also played a game of chess this weekend. As we were playing I told her that knights could defend 8 squares, and she started trying to set up chains of knights defending each other. Later during the game I explained to her how pawns advance and promote, and she decided that her pawns were goin...

It is eleven fifty eight pm and Sara just woke me up. She was laying in the floor of the sleep room crying. I put her back in bed and patted her back. She seemed to be thirsty so I got her some water. Hopefully that is all she will need tonight. (It wasn't... she woke up three more times so far) We had the primary program today (which Alison was in charge of). It went well. Andrea really wanted to be up there with the big kids. We told her that she would be up there next year. It is amazing how they grow. Sara has been following Andrea around and doing whatever Andrea does (including dancing during their favorite song during the program today). This weekend we went to a Halloween party that a ward member put on, Rea wanted to read all of their books, so that is what we mostly did. I ordered a copy of Puerto Rico, which arrived on Thursday. Alison and I played it that night. It was am interesting game, but if I make my Easter island game that I have been thinking of it will ...

This week: For Halloween we went to my parent's house and Andrea trick or treated at perhaps 15 houses. November 1st marked the first day of both NaNoWriMo and NaGaDeMo. I am participating in NaGaDeMo, and Alison is in NaNoWriMo. NaNo is fun, but I didn't want to take that much time away from developing Polynesia. The game that I decided to make is "Dancing Robots". So far I am not too far along. I have a basic rules doc, but not even all of the rules are defined, and most of the cards are not yet created. I read Harry Potter and the Natural 20 this weekend. It was pretty funny (though it is not a complete story yet). D&D folks - you will find it a fun read. I also have been reading a fair amount of HP Lovecraft recently, and decided this weekend to have a Halloween RPG one-shot campaign. We used the Inspectres   Unspeakable  micro supplement for rules, and 'The Dunwich Horror' as a starting point for the story. The gamepl...