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| The birthday girl in hot pink supervises the hunt! |
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| The engaged girl with her race entry. |
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| On your mark . . . get set . . . |
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| GO!!!!!!! |
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| Who will cross the line first? Who can make it into the cone? Who will not lose their yolk? |
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| Our family shadow portrait . . . |
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| . . . turns into our own instant message! |
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| Now its the "peg dad with the yolk" portion of the events |
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| Aftermath . . . |
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| I am yellow here, in more ways than one, as I look to escape with the aqualung. |
We followed it up with a few games of Dominion and introducing it to Garrett, and others played Shadow Hunters. The evening's standings (that were recorded):
For Family Home Evening I got to pick the activity, and I decided on a couple of cool family games from the French company Le Scorpion Masque. The first was Trafffic, a pattern recognition game not unlike SET, even simpler with a few twists. You have random colored cars on a grid, and you try to match patterns of cars to cards that are dealt to you. You can change the location of a car by grabbing the green stoplight, but cannot do it again until someone else makes a change and takes the green marker from you. Caleb was simply too quick and easily disposed of all of us every game. The second game is the very unique Climb! that resembles the climbing of a rock surface where you actually use the dexterity of your fingers to "climb" a pattern. The ladies in our family all play piano, and most inherited long fingers from my wife Michelle, and they excelled at this game. Unlike me, who has short stubby hobbit fingers that could not bend the right way, or I moved the cards or couldn't put my fingers in the hole "holds". I think the game is cool and I like it, I'm just not any good at it. My wife says its the independant finger muscles that they have from piano that makes the difference. Every time I try to move a finger, they all want to do it at the same time and I "fall" in the game. I did complete the climb once scoring 21 points and felt accomplished, only to have my 10 year old daughter Sarah do the same climb in a more advantageous way and score 38 points. Of course my wife went along and topped us all with 39 points. Very unique game, and that's a large portion of the fun of it.
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| Fat stubby fingers (like mine) have a harder time with Climb! |
It is General Conference weekend, and this is the first time that both my boys are old enough to go with me to priesthood session broadcast at the stake center. I am quite the proud father to have them sit next to me. It was a great priesthood session: 
When the prophet, President Monson spoke, he said something that really caught our attention. He spoke of how it was a priviledged time to live with the priesthood on the earth. But with those blessings come responsibilities and duties. He then said,"The call of duty came to Adam, to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, to Samuel, to David. It came to the Prophet Joseph Smith and to each of his successors." I nudged Caleb and said "I guess that settles it, the prophet prefers Call of Duty." His eyes widened and he nudged Jonathan. You see, I have had a little arguement going with my boys regarding which first-person shooter game is better, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3(COD:MW3), or Battlefield 3 (BF3). I prefer BF3 on the computer, while they say COD:MW3 is better on the XBox. 
With that statement in conference, they smiled a bit and payed closer attention. President Monson went on to repeat the phrase "Call of Duty" quite a few times:
A completely epic gaming night, and we played some great titles. We started quickly with Shadow Hunters and it ended up being no contest as Stephen was a neutral Charles and was able to get everyone in the same place and blast them all with a machine gun, meet his win condition, and end the game quickly. Probably the shortest SH game I've ever played. We then divided into two groups where one played Egizia (one of my favorites), and I taught Small World with two players new to it. I am still having difficulty getting my timing down with declining races, but it was again fun, there is great variety in the game. 
After our ping-pong/ pool half-time, one group played Power Grid and my group tried a new game, Ninjato. Its a game of 7 turns & 3 scoring rounds where you have three actions each turn represented by nifty wooden shuriken (throwing stars). You can train at the dojo to get cards used for other actions, learn skills from the sensei, attack clan houses by defeating guards to obtain treasures, and then use those treasures to either bribe envoys or collect rumors. Each element fits together nicely, and you see how important your choices are in the scoring rounds. You can't do everything, so there are interesting choices to get the most honor points. I kept setting off alarms at the clan houses and could never fully defeat them. Tyler jumped to large lead early and we couldn't quite catch him. I did get to throw one of the shuriken at Nate though, but it didn't stick. |
| Josh is either worried about Nate, or how late it is |
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| Check out the cool shuriken markers! |
Today was EFM at Fountain Valley High School, or "Every Fifteen Minutes", that is how often a drunk driver kills someone. It is a production for Juniors & Seniors at FVHS that involves the police, fire, and other city departments to warn teens of the dangers of drunk driving. Last year Hannah was on the award-winning crew that produced the video for Los Amigos HS, and was recognized by the city. This year she is co-producing it at FVHS, and today was the accident scene in front of the school. Hannah got to film at the jail, ride in the ambulance, and tonight will be editing film all night to produce the video for the school assembly tomorrow. She is doing an awesome job, and the event today that the students got to witness was very sobering and moving. Remember this is all a production, not an actual accident. 
We began game night with some 8 player flavor and broke out Incan Gold. Its your basic push your luck gem collector. My daughter Sarah then taught a group Snorta! while 5 of the gents who signed up proceeded to play an abbreviated game of Core Worlds. With 4 new players it took awhile to get going, but there were quite a few good strategies emerging. As my second play I definitely like it better than Eminent Domain, maybe even a little better than Race for the Galaxy. We then got seven of us to rev up the engines for what I was anticipating, a full advanced rules race of Formula D! The game is MUCH better with the advanced rules, with different wear points and slipstreaming it kept all of us within reach of each other. We had multiple leaders, and debris littering the track from our wreckless driving. Eventually only three drivers finished the race! |
| Stephen was one of the few that finished the race. |
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| Dallin was leaving debris on the track from the very first turn! |
