Cute Kid Pix April 2018

More pictures that didn't make their own post...

Grandpa came to visit for his birthday. We took him to a baseball game, which even short-term readers have read about here. We also made him a cake with chocolate bars inside. The preschooler was happy to help with the candles.

Working together

Success!

Who needs more than four slices?

The first library story time in April was about rain, which didn't stop them from pulling out the bubble machine for some extra fun.

Happy bubble time

Later in the week we went to another storytime, also with the rain theme. The children did a simple craft--gluing some raindrops and an umbrella on a piece of paper, with the typical coloring for good measure.

Gluing water?!?

The most natural smile ever

The older kids' school had their twenty-fifth anniversary celebration which included collaborative art by the students. My daughter worked with a younger student to produce this art and predictions about the future...

Click to enlarge

Proud artist?

My oldest son and his friend performed a saxophone duet for their school's 25th anniversary. They played the duet twice!



Another library was about wild animals and had a classically easy craft. In a surprising twist, my preschooler let me help with the crayons. I colored with every other color!

Gluing the elephant down

No picture of me coloring, alas!

Final result

April 28, 2018, was International Table Top Day, celebrating board gaming at stores across the country. We visited our local game story, The Family Game Store, to try some demos and snag some swag. The kids enjoyed trying out Sticky Chameleons, a dexterity game where players roll dice then try to get the bug that matches the color and shape. Players flick elastic, sticky tongues at the table to make the capture. It looks like lots of fun.

Ready to roll and flick

Since all of us were there, we picked up a bunch of free promo items for games we have.

Promos!

April was a fun month and we are looking forward to May!

Cabin Fever at Savage Mill

Savage Mill hosted a Cabin Fever event on Saturday, March 10, 2018. My two sons and I went to enjoy some of the activities. Mommy and my daughter were off at an American Heritage Girls event, otherwise they would have joined us.

Savage Mill

A bit of the interior

We arrived about half an hour before events started so we went to The Family Game store and tried out one of the games in their game room library. The prescholar picked out a game named Zero, which we were a little nervous about. Delving in, we discovered it is an abstract card game where the goal is to score as few points as possible with a hand of nine cards. Cards come in seven colors and are numbered one through eight. If a player has five or more cards of the same color, they don't count for the score. Multiple cards of the same number only score that number once, e.g. if you had three 7 cards they would only add 7 to your score. We enjoyed playing until it was time to go to one of the demos.

Sweet Cascades Chocolatier demonstrated how they handcraft truffles. They showed us an actual cocoa pod and what the contents looked like.

Shaking the bean

He wants to take it home!

The beans inside the pod are held together in a gooey white substance that is removed. The beans are dried and roasted to make cocoa nibs, some of which we tasted. They had chocolate flavor but not very much sweetness.

Beans dried but not separated (no pic of the nibs we ate, sorry!)

They then demonstrated how they hand-dipped the truffles (these had a ganache filling that was hand-rolled earlier) and put special decorations to identify the truffles.

Drying and decorating workspace

Machine that properly stirs and heats the chocolate for dipping

It wasn't a mistake that the lady had a balloon with her because she was about to make a chocolate bowl. The balloon was also hand-dipped and allowed to dry. Once the chocolate is solid again, the balloon is deflated and a nice little bowl is left.

Dipping the balloon

Isn't this a waste of good chocolate?!?

Set to dry

Finished product

The chocolatier also had a raffle for the chocolates and the bowl. We entered but did not win.

Our next event was story time at Books With a Past, which is an awesome name for a used book store.  My youngest son was the target audience, so my older son found a book on the shelf to read for the ten or twenty minutes of story time. The store has comfortable chairs and couches so he was satisfied. My younger son enjoyed the story time but he also snagged a book from the shelf and read a story to himself while he listened to the lady read to the group. She read Ten Rules of Being a Superhero by Deb Pilutti and Charlotte and the Rock by Stephen W. Martin and Samantha Cotterill.

My son is in the back of the group

Rocking at story time

Our next planned event was a game demo at The Family Game Store which didn't start for another half hour. We ordered lunch at Say Cheezz Grille. My elder son had the best grilled cheese sandwich of his life (or so he claimed). My younger son had chicken nuggets with french fries (which he shared) and the most potent barbecue sauce ever. I had the "Oink and Egg"--a sandwich with a scrambled egg, your choice of sausage, ham, or bacon, and a slice of cheese (again, your choice). I had bacon and swiss on my sandwich, a yummy and filling treat.

Great food

We headed over to the game store and tried the demo of Kingdomino, a tile-laying game where players bid on various tiles for their kingdom. The tiles are domino-shaped and have either one or two types of ground on them--hills or pastures or fields or forests and so on. The trick is to get the same type of ground on different tiles touching and to have ground with crowns marked on it. The area of ground is multiplied by the number of crowns in the area (thus a large area with no crowns would yield no score!). The game is fun and quick. We decided to buy the game and received a spare throne for the starting tiles and a cool tower that holds and dispenses the domino tiles. They don't come with the game normally but the store had promo items to give away. Good thing we came early!

Game and bonuses

We were going to buy some chocolates for dessert and to bring home for Mommy and my daughter but the chocolatier is also the grilled cheese place. All the workers were occupied with the lunch rush. No one was working the chocolate counter! So we went home for dessert.

The mill had plenty of other activities at other stores--a children's craft at Aww BABY Organics, earring making at Bead Soup, and painting a pint glass at Rams Head, to name a few. Since I was the driver, I didn't go for the pint glass event since it was free only if you bought a pint of beer (which doesn't come in a take-home container). Maybe if we had stayed longer after lunch I could have gotten away with it but the young one still does nap time and had to get home before too long.

We had a lot of fun and look forward to more events at Savage Mill.

Dice Masters: Archers Monthly OP

Our friendly local game store, The Family Game Store, hosted the DC Dice Masters Archers Open Play event. We drafted cards and dice from the Green Arrow and The Flash set, which was totally new to me.

The swag offered during the event

Without any experience, I had to guess on which characters would make a good team while we were drafting cards. Sometimes I chose cards for their rarity but didn't get any of the super-rares. I made a mostly villain team from what I drew.

My team (click to enlarge)

The team is also all fist and bolt characters so I chose the action cards Invulnerability and Casualties, both of which have global abilities using bolt and fist energy. The star of my team was the Justice League character Firestorm, who was able to hold the field and keep me covered (most of the time). His special ability required me to have character from every energy type, so I would never get to use it, but this version of Firestorm was cheaper than the other card I drew. He was easy to field and strong enough to knock out other characters and not get knocked out himself.

I won two of the three games I played. In the one I lost, my opponent was able to get a big, tough character, Gorilla Grodd, whose special ability gave +1 attack to his other characters and, more importantly, Overcrush, which allows extra damage to be inflicted on the opponent. I couldn't overcome the onslaught.

Even so, I tied for second place (with two other players) and received some nice prizes.

OP awards from the contest

I had a great time and look forward to the next contest.

Dicemasters: Ant-Man OP December 2015

My son has retired from the Dicemasters circuit since his triumphant finale with the DC Trinity War storyline. So the next superhero event at our friendly local gaming store was a solo outing for me. This event was the Ant-Man Organized Play. We had a rainbow draft of the new Amazing Spider-Man set and built a team of eight based on the cards and dice that we selected. My team was all friends of Spider-Man, but the Wall Crawler himself was not in the group.

My team

I'm not up on all the recent Marvel history, so characters like Scarlet Spider, Spider-Girl, and Agent Venom (isn't Venom a bad guy?) are new to me. They have some great abilities that made them worth putting on the team. Scarlet Spider is a solid fighter at a low cost; Spider-Girl has a special ability where if the opponent has more dice on the field, when she's fielded she does three damage to one character. That ability came in handy several times. Firestar has a similar ability, but only does special damage to villain characters, so she was handy against villain teams. The most potent card I had was the super-rare Black Cat. She would force an opponent to re-roll all fielded dice if she was fielded when the opponent has more dice. I only got to use the ability once but it was a golden moment, clearing away opponents so I could deliver lethal damage.

We had five people playing, which meant that every round one player had to sit out (which counts as a win but is nowhere near as satisfying). I played in the first round and was able to win with a combo of Scarlet Spiders and Spider-Girls. In the second round, my opponent didn't have any villains so Firestar never came out. The match was close since my opponent kept pinging me with Black Widows (who deal damage even when knocked out). I held out and was able to finish the job. I also played in the third round (so I never got to sit out) and was able to use Black Cat against Rhino and a side kick. Rhino re-rolled from level three to level one which was a big help. I managed to win the final round as well!

With my victory came a special Ultron card (Nanite Virus) only available from organized play and the participation card, a special art version of Ant-Man Biophysicist.

OP rewards!

It was an exciting day and I look forward to future events in 2016!

Dice Masters: Trinity War Story Line Event 2

For the Fourth of July weekend, J and I went to our second Dice Masters tournament--the second event in the Trinity War Story Line. The event did not include any flavor text so we still don't know anything about the Trinity War, though a synopsis can be found here. It's a DC storyline from a couple of years ago involving three DC superhero groups (maybe that's the trinity?). I may check the library to see if they have it in a trade paperback.

The  tournament was held in our favorite game story, The Family Game Store in Savage Mill. J and I were half the competitors again and wound up with another truckload of dice and cards since we share all our Dice Masters stuff between us.

Dice by the dozen

After the rainbow draft we each wound up with some good cards. I fielded a mostly Justice League team, which worked well since I had an Aquaman card that let me buy other JL characters for one less energy cost. The other cool card I had was a Constantine card that let me guess a character die I was going to draw out of my bag. If I drew that character and rolled a character side, I could field the character for free. That came in very handy and even saved me at the end of the first game. I wound up winning the tournament.

J did not do so well. He won his final game, so he ended on a high note. Also, he won a fellowship award for helping the guy he was playing against in the first round. That guy was a new comer and J taught him so well that the guy won!

We came away with a tournament Constantine card (in addition to the super-rare card that I drafted) and the House of Mystery action card. We did some trading as well and I got the Flash super-rare by offering up a bunch of Marvel heroes and dice.

Best of the new cards

It was fun and I realize this is a good way to fill out a collection. We'll keep our eyes open for the next Trinity War event and maybe a Marvel event if we can find one.