Fun at Home (on Vacation)

This Christmas we traveled to the San Francisco area to celebrate with family after we celebrated with my family on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. We flew on Christmas Day, which was a surprisingly good experience. In California, we stayed at my brother-in-law's house. We had a lot of fun just hanging. We did all sorts of activities indoors and outdoors.

The youngest children had fun playing in the front yard. Catch was a popular activity, especially with the new football (a Christmas present for my older son, who was probably inside playing video games). At first, my littlest son monopolized his uncle's attention.

Uncle plays catch with nephew

A good catch!

Then his daughter got in on the act and doubled the fun.

A new ball and a new player (my niece, his daughter)

Two missed catches (blame the thrower, of course)

Two catches!

The yard also had a toddler bat and ball which my son loved playing with. The t-ball stand went down almost as often as the ball got knocked off!

Batting with his cousin's bat

At least the ball is moving faster than the stand

Inside, Dance Central was a popular video game to play for the girls. It uses the Xbox Kinect sensor, a camera that records players movements. In this game, the Kinect sees how close the players follow the dance moves of the characters on screen. The girls had a ball, though my pre-schooler son didn't quite keep up. He had fun none the less.

Dancing, mostly in sync

Focused players

One day, I noticed my older son was playing with my brother-in-law in what looked a game of Battleship. Two laptops were back to back and they were totally focused on their screens. A closer inspection revealed the true nature of their game--chess. The house was sadly without a chess board and they wanted to play each other. They went onto a web site to play against each other. On-line style provided some extra entertainment. They did their trash talking through the chat function, so they would read each other's insults out loud. It was fun for spectators as well as contestants.

I have already copyrighted "Battleship Chess" so don't even try to steal my IP

My daughter took pity on them and worked with her uncle to convert some cardboard (the house had plenty of Amazon shipping boxes after Christmas) and poker chips (conveniently in white and black) into a fine chess set.

A happy crafter

The set saw a lot of use at the end of our vacation.

More crafting happened at home since the girls received crafting kits as presents.

Building houses!

More from California in future posts!