THE SIMPSONS NEWS
I’ve had a very stressful couple of days at work.  Mostly because I’ve had to make sure to get my work done on time.  We have less time to finish what we have because of the Thanksgiving holiday.  I was really cranking out the work as fast as I could.  I even worked through lunch on Tuesday because I was given an unexpected last minute scene that morning and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to finish it in time.  The scene I was already working on was very complicated.  I finished though.  I made the mistake of carpooling to work with my wife that day.  If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have had to worry so much.  Carpooling doesn’t allow me to stay late so since that wasn’t an option, I had to get my scenes done before my wife came by to pick me up.  It was a pain.  Of course, I didn’t know I was going to be given a last minute scene.  If I hadn’t finished, I would have had to come in and work during the holiday.

Now that I’m done with work and I’m off for the next couple of days, I have to worry about whether I’ll have a job after I come back.  It’s not going to be a very restful holiday.

FAMILY
The kids are sick.  They have a cold and they cough and sneeze and are generally irritated a lot by it.   I’m not sure if that is why Dante decided to wake up at 5:00 A.M. Sunday.  It was awful for me to wake up early, mostly because I’d gone to bed a 3:00 A.M. that morning (more about that in the BOARD GAMES section). Alesha took care of him for a while and let me sleep a bit but in the end, I was forced to get up having had only four hours of sleep. In order to not get mad at Dante for keeping me up, I decided to take him to Mass with me at 7:00 A.M. That way I could at least have something to do while I waited for him to get tired and go back to sleep.  Not only did it energize me, but by the time Mass was over, Dante was ready for a nap.  Of course, by that point Munchkin was awake, so I didn’t get to take one myself.

Later that day, I took Munchkin out to ride her Hummer again (see last post).  She drove over to the playground where she stopped and played with the car radio.  I rode my skateboard around the playground, just for fun.  Almost fell once or twice.  Munchkin saw a cat out by the playground and we went over to pet it a bit. She also tried riding my skateboard but couldn’t really manage it.  In the end, she just sat on it and pushed herself around.  When she got tired of the playground, she drove around the housing community and then we went home.

Alesha was at home on a Sunday for once but she wasn’t able to help out with the kids because she had work to do.  I was really tired from my lack of sleep so, playing with the kids was really difficult.  My body was just shutting down on me.

My brother Juan and his wife Deborah, had called me the day before to see if they could come over and visit.  Since I hadn’t seen them in months I told them they could.  It was good to see them again after such a long time.  I found it interesting that my sister-in-law is about six or seven months pregnant but doesn’t look it.

Well, while they were over, Munchkin had been given some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to eat.  She’d pretty much abandoned them half eaten on her little kids table.  Dante, of course, kept prowling around the little table like a hungry puppy.  Even though, he’d been given two jars of gerber and some treats only fifteen minutes before.  I had shooed Dante away from the little table more than once and he looked like he was going to behave.  I had gotten into a conversation with my brother and when I decided to turn around and check up on the kids I saw this:

I ran over there to take away the sandwiches and Dante began crawling away from me as fast as he could.  He knew he was in trouble.  Problem was he didn’t let go of the sandwich slices which he smashed into the carpet as he “ran”, leaving jelly and peanut butter behind.  When I finally caught him, he refused to let go of the sandwiches and smashed them in his little hands.  After cleaning up the mess and getting Dante clean, my brother noted that Dante seemed to have a very self satisfied expression on his face. What am going to do with this kid?  It was funny though.

BOARD GAMES

(All pictures below, I got from Board Game Geek)

Andy came over twice this weekend to play games; once on Friday night and once on Saturday night.  On Friday we played a game ofDreamblade (which I won), and then we played two games of Battlelore (which I lost).  It was the first time Andy had played Battlelore and he really enjoyed it.   It was great.  I’m glad because that’s one of the games I own that I like to play the most. The second game we had played of it that night, was really close. It was decided by one die roll.  It could have been anyone’s game.

At the end of the night, he had so much fun that he asked to come over the next night.  I said, “of course!” and so the next night he came over to play some more.

On Friday, Alesha had shown some interest in playing a game, but she was too tired to play, so she went to bed.  On Saturday she had enough energy, so when Andy came over, we played a game of Agricola (a game about farming).  It was the first time that I had played it with people (I had played the solitaire version of it before) and it was the first time Andy and Alesha had played it. We had a great time playing it. Lots of banter going on around the table and lots of laughter.  The game lasted about two hours.

Andy came in first, I came in second, and Alesha came in third.  Alesha had not realized she needed to have as balanced a farm as possible in order to score well.  She said she had a great time even though she came in last.  Andy had gotten a crazy amount of good cards that really helped him out and that he really used well.

Alesha went to bed after the game but Andy and I stayed up and played two games of Dreamblade.  I lost the first game pretty badly and barely squeaked out a win, in the second game. By the time it was over, it was 3:00 Å.M. (and if you’ve read the above post, you know how that turned out).

Tuesday night, on our drive home, Alesha asked me if I wanted to play a game when we got home (as if there was a time I don’t). When we got home and after the kids went to bed, Alesha picked out The Settler of Catan Card game to play.  It’s a two player only Catan game.

On a different day, we’d tried it once but hadn’t had time to finish because we played it late at night on a week day and had to stop playing it so that we could get some sleep.  This time, we played it all the way to the end.

I’ve never seen seen Alesha have so much fun playing a game.  It was great to see her that happy.  She loved the game.  Especially because she won by really jacking me and messing up some of my cities and settlements.  The Catan Card Game is really fun but I was very surprised at how mean some of the cards are.  You can really jack your opponent pretty badly in the game and Alesha played a very aggressive game that night.  It was fun, even though I lost.

I feel liked I got a lot of gaming in these last few days,  I like it!

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