Parents Cruise

Well, I dont know about everyone else, but I am INSANELY jealous of my parents right now being on the cruise. Its so bad that I have been talking with Amy about possibly taking our own cruise, which will probably never happen because there are alot of more important things we can do with $2000 like have a baby, put in a back lawn, put up a fence, fix my cars, blah blah blah.

In reality, I dont truly need a cruise, I just want my house to gently rock back and forth each night and thereby put me to sleep and allow me to have the BEST DANG SLEEP EVER PERIOD. Oh, and if on the rare occasion I do wake up, I need a 24 hour buffet waiting for me so I dont have to rifle through the fridge for 10 minutes only to get frustrated cause I cant find anything good to eat. Also, if someone would just give me a new menu every night at the dinner table and allow me to order anything I want, that would be nice. Make sure that some of the selections are fancy words that no mortal man could possibly pronounce. I would also request that someone come and clean my room and straighten my bed about 2-4 times a day depending on how often I go in there. Then I will need to attend some type of broadway production or something each night just to make sure Im never lacking in being entertained. And just one more thing, if someone would constantly walk around so I can order a Virgin Strawberry Daquiri or a Bloody Mary or a Pina Colada the very second I get thirsty or even think about being thirsty, that would really help. Of course after a long day of all that, Im definitely gonna need a hot tub AND steam room to relax my muscles from all the tension that has been building on such a grueling day.

Yeah, that should about do it. If I could have those simple pleasures of life, then I wouldnt have this crushing need to go on a cruise just to verify that life can actually take a breather. Just a chance FOR ONCE to forget about EVERY SINGLE THING thats important like work, family, church, bills, cars, money, shelter, etc. Cause on a cruise, you can look all your important cares right in the eye and say:

"HEY, WHY DONT YOU GO SIT ON IT AND SPIN FOR THE NEXT 8 DAYS WHILE I CONCENTRATE ON ME AND ALL THE POSSIBLE WAYS TO OUTRIGHT PAMPER EVERY PASSING THOUGHT OF EVERY LUXURY THAT ONE COULD POSSIBLY IMAGINE. THATS RIGHT! IM JUST GONNA CONCENTRATE SOLELY ON ME AND THE GENTLY ROCKING BOAT WHILE 10,000 OTHER PEOPLE ARE JUST WAITING AROUND EVERY CORNER AND CAREFULLY WATCHING MY EVERY MOVE TO MAKE DANG SURE THAT NOT A SINGLE WANT, NEED OR CARE THREATENS TO INVADE MY 8 DAYS OF COMPLETE SELF-INDULGENCE."

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Anyway, Im gonna go spend the next 10 minutes looking for food in the fridge and then go to bed hungry and frustrated.

Why I love Christmas

As you dont know, we put up our Christmas tree today, and I was thinking about all the work and frustration that goes into trying to make Christmas special...

Getting the Christmas Tree
For us it starts on Thanksgiving weekend at my in-laws. They live in a teency tiny town in the middle of nowhere-Idaho on a farm. Every year we go cut a tree from the mountains to use for Christmas trees. The fresh trees just smell so good and "supposedly" getting the tree is 1/2 the fun. Basically we drive for 30 mins to a spot where the trees are. With kids in the car, it feels more like 30 years, but 200 "look at the cows", "look at the horses" later we finally get there. Then we spend the next hour looking at 500 trees all over the mountainside, all of which look exactly the same. Its cold, the mountain is rough, the kids think its fun till they fall one time. Then finally, one hour later we eventually cut the tree that is 5 feet from the car and which we looked at when we first arrived.

Anyway, after that whole chaotic weekend of Turkey-Potatoes-Stuffing-Gluttony we come home to our warm house and fool ourselves into thinking we can sleep off everything we just ate that weekend by going to bed early.

Putting up the Christmas Tree
That was Saturday. Today we got to put up the Christmas Tree. It was a piece of rock-hard cake. Thanks to the brilliant designers of tree stands it was the most frustrating 45 minutes of my life. I walked outside to the tree and just reached through all the pine needles, sap, and stray branches and grabbed the tree by the trunk. Of course I ended up breaking the very branches that made the tree "the one" by doing this, but I figure a few years down the road, my wife and kids will eventually stop saying "Remember that time Dad totally made our Christmas tree look like crap?". After losing hundreds of needles by trying to get it through the front door of the house, I gently slid it into the tree stand which wasnt too bad, but who the heck designed the tree-holder-screws to be WAY too small for their holes? I figure it was either a complete moron or else a complete moron. I actually had to get the vice grips so that I could turn the tree-holder-screws around so that they would screw against the trunk to hold the tree up. Once I finally got all 4 screw-things in, I told Amy to let go. And voila!, it started tipping to one side. We quickly grabbed the tree and stood it back up while I went back underneath the sappy needle-dropping monstrosity and redid all the screws. Finally, after all that, it stayed standing up. I only had minor scrapes on my arms, 2 of my fingers were stuck together with sap, and I only had 3-4 pine needles which had fallen down the back of my shirt. But the tree looked great.

Decorating the Tree
This part was the easiest. The light strands and tinsel and beads went around fairly easily. The kids fought about who gets to hold and play with what decorations etc. But it didnt take us long to get it all decorated.

Christmas Magic
The first time you plug in the lights is inspiring. Its wonderful. When it finally got dark at night we turned off all the lights and just stared at the tree. It was gorgeous. The pine smells great. The kids love it. The snow started to fall today, and the Christmas music finally felt like it was supposed to be playing. After all that mess,.... the tree, the smell, the music, and our family, all in one room, finally brought Christmas into our home and it was so nice and peaceful.

And thats what I love about Christmas.

Bye Bye PS2

Well, I returned my PlayStation2 to WalMart today. Its pretty fun, but it didnt provide enough entertainment to be worth the $130 price tag. So I returned it and the memory card and got $160 back. It felt really good to dump that load and have the cash sitting back in my hands.

Now lets see where I can next blow all the cash I just got back...

Duel of Ages

So the first board game I have bought on my new Board Game Kick is Duel of Ages. This game is freakin awesome!!! It generally takes 2-3 hours per game, so you gotta have a nice block of time if you want to play it. We have been playing after the kids are in bed.

Its a 2 team game. A team can be 1-8 players. Me and Amy have been playing it by ourselves. We did 2 player teams while we were in Idaho and had a blast.

The game is played representing 4 periods in time, the ancient, colonial, modern, and future.

Each team starts out with a pre-determined number of characters. We have been doing 6 characters per team. Most websites recommend 10 per team, but I cant even imagine the chaos that would cause, but anyway... You draw cards to select your characters. Each character is from a time period. You could draw Genghis Kahn from the ancient, Pyraxian from the future, Frostdancer - a chinese assasin from the colonial era, or Private Sanchez - a sniper from the modern era. There are about 45 characters in all to choose from, even Spartacus is in there. So your team will end being made up of random characters from all these different time periods.

The object of the game is to complete "adventures", which allow you to draw from the equipment pile, which is where your weapons, mounts, armor, and gadgets can be found. You then use all these things to destroy the other team in all out war. All the equipment is also from the 4 different time periods.

The equipment is what make the game very interesting. You could end up with Genghis Kahn on a Mountain Bike carrying a Particle Accelerator while wearing a Kevlar vest. Or maybe you get Cowboy Tex riding a Sumerian Chariot with a Gold Shield wielding a Compound Bow. The possibilites are endless. Some characters get certain benefits when they have the right weapons. Like Private Sanchez gets a bonus to his ranged attacks when he has a long rifle, or Annie Oakley gets a bonus to her ranged attacks when she has a revolver. Or Ace the Quarterback gets a bonus to his throwing ability (cause hes a quarterback), which makes him extremely dangerous when he has grenades. Geronimo gets a bonus to his ability to hide when he is in the bushes on the board.

Im telling you, this game is sweet. Imagine Geronimo with Hover Boots with a Samurai Sword and a Swat Team Riot Helmet while wearing camoflauge.

Its just plain crazy.

So basically you have to complete these quests on the board, and depending on how well you do, will determine how many equipment cards you can draw for that character. Then you run around with all your sweet gear trashing the other team's characters.

Anyway, me and Amy have been playing pretty religiously for past few nights and have just been loving it. There are 7 expansions to the game so far which add more characters, new types of land, new equipment etc. I know we are going to buy the next expansion which has bases, prisons, and even flying characters.

Oh, I also gotta mention, the gameboard is made up of about 12 interlocking pieces. Each piece has different things on it like buildings, tunnels, forest, water, rivers, lakes, fallen giants, etc. All these things have a play on what you can/cant do. At the beginning of the game you take turns placing the pieces.

So every single game has a different board with different characters with different gear.

Its never ever the same game.

Im tellin ya, its freakin awesome!

Games Games Games

Im not sure what it is lately, but Ive been caught by a gaming bug big time. Im talking card and board games. So Ive spent alot of time recently surfing around the net and looking at some of the newer games that have been released, and their are some pretty sweet ones. Most of my time has been spent on funagain.com where they have tons and tons of games and lots of reviews etc. What a great site. I already bought Duel of Ages and me and Amy have been playing that for the past few nights and it has been super fun. We even took it to Idaho and played it there too with Jonathon and he loved it.

So basically, each paycheck me and Amy each have $30 to spend on whatever we want. So I think Ill be getting a new board/card game twice a month for awhile.