THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Chaotic work week. Alesha started work so we started out carpooling together. Do to the crazy amount of last minute work I need to get done, that soon changed. I had to get all my work on one crew done by Tuesday because I started on a new crew on Wednesday.  I wasn’t told until late Monday.  It wasn’t a very happy situation.

FAMILY 

I just thought I’d take the time to say,

“Happy Birthday!” to Eduardito. My cousin’s boy has turned 3 years old, hurray! He had a really fun birthday party Saturday.  I kinda wished we could have stayed a bit longer since Munchkin was just starting to have fun but, Alesha wasn’t feeling well.  Best part of the party was seeing Dante hit the pinata. Very funny.

BOARD GAMES

So I asked Munchkin if she wanted to play a card game with me.  Of course she said, “YES!” So I took out a Memory game.   It’s a Mr. Potato Head Memory card game we got as a McDonalds Happy Meal toy a year or so ago.  I’ve been waiting all this time to be able to play a game with her with these cards.  I tried to do so a few weeks after we had gotten them but she was too little to understand the memory matching.

At first I wanted to test her to see if she would be able to understand what we were suppose to be doing.  I put the cards face down and she flipped one up, then she took turns flipping every card, looking at it, then putting it back down face down until she found the match.  This is how we played the first two times.  I didn’t take any turns.

Then I decided to test her to see if she would play by the “rules” by only allowing her to flip over two cards. If they didn’t match, it was MY turn.  That way, if I flipped over a card she was looking for, I wanted to see if she would remember it.  Also, I wanted to see if she got the idea of taking turns.  I did this with a few cards at first and with every game I added more.  She did fantastic.   We were playing with all the cards in no time. I was amazed.  She even beat me at the game quite a few times, she was really good at it.  I handicapped myself, only a little and unintentionally.  When I would find a match, I wouldn’t take another turn, but when she found a match, she took another turn.  When I tried to take a second turn after I found a match, I found she got impatient and thought it was unfair. She felt I was skipping her turn so I stopped doing it.  Otherwise, we played the game by the rules.

To me, this was the greatest thing ever.  I was FINALLY playing a board game with my daughter.  One that wasn’t mindless.  One with choices. It was as if the clouds had parted and God (looking like the one in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail) came out of a cloud saying:

So having realized that Munchkin is old enough to play games with me now, I made my way to the local Target store the next day to look for games I might be able to play with her.  I looked at games and found a few but I wasn’t sure if they were any good so I wrote down the names of all the ones I thought looks interesting and went home to look them up on BGG.

None but ONE of the games where any good, and even the one I thought sounded good wasn’t really all that good.  What I was searching for was a game that she could learn to play now, but that would still be challenging as she got older. Though a bit dull, Memory is exactly this type of game.  All you do is add more cards and it gets more difficult. Candyland was right out.  No decisions and too easily outgrown (not to mention I did NOT want to play Candyland).  So I searched online for some games.  These are the games that caught my eye that I think fit the criteria I was looking for:

Kids of Carcassonne:

Yes, that’s right, there is a Carcassonne game for kids and it looks great. I think Munchkin would “get” this one to some extent and she could grow into it.  Check out this review of the game:

Next is…

Gulo Gulo:

This is a dexterity game with a modular board where you play a cute wolverine who takes eggs from the vulture nest in the middle. You do this so you can rescue the baby wolverine that has gotten himself trapped in the nest. Here’s a video review explaining the game:

Finally…

Chicken Cha Cha Cha:

A memory game with also with a modular board. The object of the game is to steal the feathers of the other player’s chickens by jumping over them.  The way you move your chicken forward is by flipping over a card in the center of the board that matches the picture in the square in front of  your chicken.  You continue your turn until you fail to find a match.

Out of  all of these, I think I can make a homemade version of Chicken Cha Cha Cha.  It just won’t be as silly as the chicken theme but we will be able to play it.

I’m thinking of using the Qwirkle tiles to do this.  They work really well to play Memory.  In fact, after I got tired of the Potato Head Memory game I subjected to Munchkin that we use the Qwirkle tiles.  We took out a set of matching pieces, flipped them around, shuffled them up and played a game.  It was much more difficult and still, Munchkin did amazingly well.  She won most of the time and I think I tide her once.  Although I suppose I did let her win sometimes.  Still, she remembered where tiles were or the general area where tiles were.  Sometimes she remembered tiles I hadn’t, and as a bonus, after we were done playing she decided to just play with the tiles.  She like telling me the colors and shapes as well as counting them.

I love being able to play board games with her now.

BLOGS/PODCASTS

I’ve recently been asked by two different bloggers/podcasters if for permission to use my drawings for their posts.  They’ve both used the drawings for very different purposes and I find that kinda neat.

Here a link to both the sites:

St. Mary Catholic Church Podcast – My drawing is used as a compliment to a “sound bite” of a sermon on the Sacrament of Reconciliation (a.k.a. Confession). It’s two minutes long. Check it out.

No More Lives – This a blog (and soon to be podcast) which tries to be, in their own words, “the New Yorker of video games”. In an attempt to bring in a little variety to their content, they’ve gotten a board game geek on board to express a different position. My drawing was used in one such article on their site called Gaming Without Batteries  by Kyle Bolin. Great read.

If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.

Comments are appreciated as well.

I also have a store. Click Here and check it out.

If you would like to have a text ad on my site, click on the red BUY LINKS button under the Archives list.

And while you’re at it, please Digg me too.

Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.