Game Night Gone Wild

Last night one of the girls, Lili I think, suggested we play a board game. Trivial Pursuit was selected. We were missing many of the pie pieces so needed to play in teams. We made it through the game, but it was more silliness than true game play. Evie took care of moving the pawns, about halfway through we realized she'd been moving just one of them most of the time. I didn't realize the teams weren't supposed to take turns back and forth and so kept calling out answers when it wasn't our turn. We all fussed when one team would get an incredibly easy question, then the next team would get one that seemed inordinately hard. For instance one questions was, "What does a tadpole become when it matures"? Followed by, "Where is the National Cowboy Hall of Fame located"? Huh! There was some great silliness like when Lili asked the question "What were the the 49ers looking for in California" The other team answered "Gold", she read the answer to another question, telling the team they were wrong and the answer was Philadelphia! Another question was about what was the overdue book fee charged for a book returned to a specific library 233 years late. Someone answered, one... one dollar... I followed with "one dollar book fine" to the tune of "five dollar foot long". Maybe you had to be there.

We had a great time and will have to pull out more of the board games for more fun evenings. It's easy to forget when very busy that it can be so easy and cheap to have fun all together.

We gave up cable tv more than a month ago to save money. I thought we'd really miss it, multiple tvs were always on, whether they were being watched or not. Each of the girls could often be found watching the same show in different rooms. They watched Nick and Disney, but were just as likely to watch HGTV or the Food channel. Discovery, Discovery Kids and Animal Planet were very popular as well. We still have cable internet and many channels have their shows available for viewing online. We thought the computers would be the girls' new tvs. We were wrong. Except for needing to make arrangements for them to see the Kid's Choice Awards on Nick at my parent's house, it hasn't been an issue at all.

My kids have always gotten along well, there are of course nitpicks, but nothing too bad. I now realize most of the issues that came up in the past were related to the tv. Someone wanted to watch a different show than was currently being watched. Another was standing too close to the tv and blocking the view of the others. One remembered this happening in a tv show, the other remembered that happening, and so on. Not only are those petty arguments gone, the general nitpicking and taunting has been all but eliminated as well. I've never thought tv was bad for kids, I still don't. But I think it does draw siblings away from one another. I can't believe how much more time they spend talking to one another, comparing notes on books they've shared, making up silly games, making plans for ways to entertain themselves. It's truly a wonderful thing.

Here are my dogs Bubba and Daisy enjoying the sun a few days ago, keeping me company while I was outside reading.


This video is Beth holding a ringneck snake we found in the pool. These are sweet, beautiful little snakes. We'd found snake eggs under some wood a few years ago and brought them in the house to watch them hatch. It was very cool.

Ring Neck Snake from Melissa B on Vimeo.

Taco soup for dinner tonight, in honor of what must surely be the last cold spell of the year. Tori needs to go take the CPT (college placement test) sometime this week. We have a field trip to Publix tomorrow and one to Crystal Springs on Thursday.