"Vengeance is Mine; I Will Repay," Saith . . . Well, Me

I never win when we play games. Ever. You might as well stamp a big red "L" on my forehead, take my picture and put it in the great big Yearbook of Life with the caption "Loser." So it has come as quite a shock to my family that I have sought vindication with a vengeance since purchasing the board game Clue recently. I have now won TWO games . . . in a row!

Although it took almost no time for the kids to catch on and learn about subterfuge and misdirection, I am sorry to say that the games have become more about who can figure out whodunit quicker, Randy or me. The kids are just little pawns in our game within a game! We all got a huge laugh today when Randy claimed he was "feeling the pressure" to beat me to the punch and therefore made an incorrect accusation (which he went ahead with even though he saw my jaw hanging open in disbelief when I heard what he was proposing). His reaction when he saw the cards in the secret envelope was priceless! I guess you had to be there.

We got more snow today and while the kids were able to go out and play for a while, we've really been getting a lot of use out of our board games. Along with Clue, we also recently purchased Monopoly Jr. (the girls don't have the patience for the "original" version, though we ALL played it back on Christmas of '05 during the previously blogged-about power outage--Monopoly by candlelight!) and they've been having fun with it. I don't think they like playing with me because #1 I buy every property I land on, which eventually costs them all the money they've got, but more importantly #2 I buy their "favorite" properties, i.e., Sweet Treats Snack Shack, Bend 'Em Bumper Cars, Supersonic Space Flight, Clown Around Fun House, etc. That's what really chaps 'em!

Sawyer has been passing the indoor time playing dress-up--this week he has been a Bionicle and Darth Sidious (I have no idea if that name is spelled properly and frankly, I don't care!). The Star Wars costume required him to use his imagination, but it was the sound effects that helped him to pull it off. I only wish I could include them here!

We went to our fantastic downtown library for about three hours yesterday and spent just a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon reading and taking part in some other activities. In preparation for our outing, I made the kids clean out their rooms and bring me any library books they had finished reading because all of our cards (I'm not including Randy here) were dangerously close to the limit--blast Sawyer and all of his construction books! Anyway, I didn't count but I would estimate that between the five of us we returned over 100 books to our local branch before setting off for the library downtown. And guess how many we returned home with? Yep, 168. It never ends.