Monthly Archives: January 2012

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Family, Musings

A Visit with Timothy

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My nephew Timothy has been visiting with us the last few days; it has been a pleasure for us to have him with us. Sadly, he heads back to college tomorrow, taking some of the fun with him. On Friday, he joined us for a game party, and on Saturday he helped to pick out Rachel’s new kitten. Today we taught him to play Stone Age — I particularly like having him around because he takes even longer than I do, to decide what to do in a given game-turn.

I’m always being hassled for my careful, deliberate style in playing games. The kids like to tease me about it:

“Hey Mom,” one of them will quip. “It’s my turn after Dad’s turn, so I won’t be able to wash a load of laundry. I can, however, wash the dishes, clean my room, mow the yard and attend a swim meet while we wait for Dad.”

My children are hilarious.


Timothy missed his little brother, so Daniel stood in for Samuel.

I think part of the problem is that I play games, not so much against the other players, but against myself. I want to play each game (within the context of the luck of the draw and the choices of the other players) in the most efficient way, maximizing my chance to win. I don’t so much care if I win or lose, but mostly I want to be sure to squeeze every possible advantage out of each of my turns. I particularly hate to win when I don’t know how or why I was victorious.

It was a good day. We enjoyed Tung’s teaching on Luke 6 in Sunday School, an excellent lecture by Andy Frye of Worldview Academy fame, and a delicious meal back at home. My parents came by for a quick visit and belated birthday celebration for Timothy, and then we read a few chapters of our latest Gordon Korman book (A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag). We played a few more games (Race to the Galaxy, Stone Age) and finished the evening with a Tim Hawkins DVD. All in all, we counted the day a success.


Sometimes you count yourself lucky to get your own hand back from a game-turn.

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Musings

The End of All Things

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I never thought it would come to this.

In spite of all the hype of the Mayan calendar, and 2012, and all that, I didn’t really think that the world would end this year.

Don’t get me wrong — Jesus can return any time He likes. But now the clock is ticking: Rachel picked out a kitten today at the Humane society, and we’re scheduled to bring it home on Friday.


Rachel with her soon-to-be-adopted kitten.

We’ve been without a pet for so long, we don’t really believe it will happen, I’ve been racking my brain for what will prevent us from being cat-owners; this is why I am feeling so apocalyptic.


Kathy tried to stage this picture, telling them all to point at the kitten … but she forgot to tell them where to point.

Clearly, we’ve forgotten all the lessons we learned from previous pet ownership, as chronicled in The Cowardly Cavy Caper.

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Musings

Photo-less Friday

Some days nothing works.

This was such a day. I upgraded our version of WordPress to 3.something at Kathy’s insistence, but in doing so, I pretty much killed our web host. We keep running out of memory for the simplest tasks, and every time I get the server up, my spam software stops working.

Anyway, I can’t seem to upload photos to the blog under the new setup, just yet. Maybe tomorrow.

Still, we had a lovely game night, and (although I lost a lot) I had a good time. I ate WAY too much, and (to add insult to injury) forgot to go to AnyTime Fitness after everyone had left. Now it is too late (yes, I know, AnyTime is open … ANY time) — I just can’t bring myself to leave the house now, when it is so late.

Lets hope that tomorrow brings me great success in all my various goals.

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Musings

Kitchen Patrol

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When I was a kid, I wasn’t allowed to wash the dishes. Apparently, I was too slow, and my brother resented spending his entire evening, waiting for each dish to be lovingly cleaned and placed in the drying rack. He appealed to my Mom, who sentenced me to a lifetime of drying.

Drying dishes has to be about the stupidest thing in the world. If you leave ‘em, they’ll dry by themselves, and you can put them away much more quickly; but my Mom always insisted that the dishes had to be dried. I retaliated by taking so long to dry them, that they air-dried anyway. I really showed her!

We recently spent a week in the Duckabush with my extended family — we often dined together as a group, some twenty strong. Somehow the women-folk got the idea that, since they were doing most of the cooking, we men-folk should manage the clean-up. And so, my brother and I turned the clock back some 40 years, and washed the dishes together.

Fun with dishes
At least this time I didn’t have to dry — but I was relegated to ‘rinsing’ since I still couldn’t be trusted to actually wash.

Well aware that the reward for a job well-done is often another job, we determined to wash the dishes in such a way that we would not be asked again. We shouted and threw dishes and sprayed water at each other, and generally carried on as though we were pillaging the kitchen, much to the amusement of our sons and brother-in-law. And yet, we failed — our plan backfired. Everyone had such fun watching our horseplay, that they called for us to wash dishes the next day as well.

Clearly we needed a better strategy. How do you avoid doing the dishes, gentle reader? Chime in with a comment.

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Family, Rachel

Sweet Sixteen

I know, this blog post is supposed to be about today, or at least, the photo is supposed to be taken on or near this day, otherwise, what is the point of a Project 365 blog?

Rules, or at least the following of them, have never been my forte.

This picture was taken near Rachel’s 16th birthday, back in December. Some dear friends loaned us their cool bus (pictured below) and Rachel took a group (gaggle?) of girls up to Bellevue Square to window shop. We decorated the bus, stocked it with goodies, but we still needed a driver.

Fearless Driver
The birthday girl and her driver

“There’s no way I’m going,” I bluffed, trying to look like I was really digging in my heels. “Shopping with a dozen girls, in Bellevue? That’s not really my scene.” I was weakening, and Rachel knew it. She gave me her ‘please, may I have a kitten?’ look, which she has been practicing for years.

I began to panic. Six or eight hours driving and shopping didn’t sound like much fun to me. “Wait, what about Michelle?” I blurted. (There’s nothing like a good panic to get the ‘ole brain cells firing.) “She loves to drive, and she’s a girl, so she probably doesn’t mind shopping!”

A few text messages later, Michelle was on the hook to drive the bus. What a great friend. Thanks, Michelle! And a special thank-you to our dear friends, who loaned us their bus, and didn’t even fuss when we blew out a fuse with our hot-water pot!

A gaggle o' girls
Rachel has a nice group of friends.

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