Three Things

For Christmas, my bro (and his lovely sweetheart who perhaps helped talk him into such goings-on? :) gifted each child-group a new board game. Ours sat temptingly on the game shelf for the past two months . . . while we battled all sorts of ills. Finally, Buck decided it was time to throw schedules to the wind and bust open the light plastic wrapping.

Of course in the world of tech (in which he so enjoys dabbling), you don't read the included paper instructions first--perish the thought! You go on youtube (with your cell phone) and beam the instructional videos you find to your television (with the help of a tricky little plug-in called google chrome) oooh ahhh! It worked out great, because we could all get the gist of the game together (even if the hosts all seemed to have bizarre accents that made "terrain" sound befuddlingly like "train" through three different videos). "Then you're gonna take your train pieces . . ." What? All I see are trees, rocks, and sand!!!

 
Passing that obstacle, we were able to dive into the game of sinking Atlantis, called Survive! This game is frustrating to Brennen; he doesn't like when people attack (and eat) his little guys with sharks or sea serpents. I actually had to send him to his room today because he was becoming an increasingly bad sport during sibling play. Granted he chose the green guys and one was missing, which put him at an immediate disadvantage (that we maybe didn't notice right away, oops! :) However, the rules are quick to learn and it's very easy for the kids to put together a game on their own with no parent involvement (not that we don't want to play with them, we just don't want to play as OFTEN as they want to play :)

Another "thing" on my "three things" list is this puzzle. We're hoping to visit the East Coast at some point, and hope to take the kids through the Smithsonian. This puzzle depicts a few of the treasures in the Smith, and has hidden objects that you have to detect once the puzzle is put together (like Where's Waldo, but with no Waldo :)

The third thing came along with the second thing; the kids have decided they are kind of bored with the PC games we have in our collection (I'm all about educational rather than video games; they know they have a better shot at getting computer time--gotta know how to navigate computers right? Educational!--than xbox or wii). The puzzle came with a new PC game . . . tadaaa! It's a Bermuda Triangle mystery game, also finding hidden pictures, and solving small games to progress. Definitely more advanced than the old Clifford's Reading Games, Happy Birthday Dora, and ancient graphics help build Noah's Ark games they're used to (ha! It's not quite that bad, they have all the Scrabble Journey, Wheel of Fortune, etc. games Buck used to buy for me :)

(It occurs to me I don't have a picture of the "third thing." If you need a picture of the children playing a game on the computer to feel this blog entry is complete, just leave a note in the comment section, lol :)