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Tuesday, December 6th, 2011
“Avast, ye scurvy dogs!” People say that only in pirate movies, but when I think of vitamins, I think of that phrase. As you may recall from playing Oregon Trail, scurvy was/is a real disease. Somewhere along the educational line, I learned that it came from a deficiency of Vitamin C. And there you have it: how my mind works. Vitamins, Oregon Trail, pirates.
But seriously – in addition to our access to a healthy diet, we can get extra vitamins cheaply, even in gummy form. (Or the perhaps too-yummy Flintstone variety, of which I ate an entire bottle as a child. Which Poison Control didn’t exactly recommend, but I’m still here.)
Tags: Children, Food, Games, Human Body, Movies, Pioneer Principle, Protection
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Friday, November 25th, 2011
What is it that makes competition so fun and enlivening? My husband’s family is very competitive, and whenever we get together, we play lots of games. From ping-pong to poker, Jenga to Jeopardy, everyone wants to win – and that makes it lots of fun. (It also helps that I’m much better at losing than I was when I was a kid.)
Tags: Family, Games, Vacation
Posted in Family, Fun | 2 Comments »
Saturday, July 23rd, 2011
Today was the first day of our beach vacation. My favorite part of the day came before we even went to the beach, though. We were settling into our rental house, and I started throwing the Sky-O with my husband. Indoors. (Things you do at a rental house.) We were waiting for some family to get back from the grocery store, and we just passed the time with this little flying ring. It was incredibly relaxing. A great reminder that sometimes we just need to get away from work – and play.
Tags: Family, Games
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Sunday, April 17th, 2011
Our weather has been teasing us lately – roller coaster-ing from the 30s to the 60s and back again, with lots of rain. Today has been a perfect Spring day, though. We celebrated by playing minigolf. Beautiful!
Tags: Beauty, Games, Nature
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Sunday, April 10th, 2011
My parents don’t play a lot of games. They work hard and collapse on the weekends, like most people! I brought our Wii to their house, and we enjoyed playing Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and golf. I like the Wii because it has family-friendly games that you can play with each other, so you’re interacting while having fun (as opposed to solitary video games that take the player away from the family).
Tags: Family, Games, Possessions, Weekends
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Saturday, February 5th, 2011
Okay, I am going to toot my own horn here for a sec. Tonight I had one of the best gift-giving moments ever! I absolutely love finding the perfect gift for someone and the anticipation of giving it to him or her. But tonight surpassed my expectations.
The birthday: one of my very best friends, BW. She likes the “Twilight” series, so when I turned around in Bed, Bath & Beyond recently and saw a Twilight board game, I thought it would make a fun (sort of gag) gift. And I knew it would be a total surprise. 
Well, I wish I had caught the gift-opening experience on video. It was priceless. There were squeals and grins and exclamations. Perhaps the greatest actually came from her housemate, another Twihard, who exclaimed, “I am SO GLAD I live with you right now!!” They were both absolutely delighted.
I don’t know how I’ll top that one next year, but it’s a terrific feeling.
Tags: Friends, Games, Girls, Possessions
Posted in Friends, Fun, Possessions | Comments Off
Sunday, January 16th, 2011
We all need breaks and rest, and I’m going to get that tomorrow (tomorrow I’ll be thankful for federal holidays!). But I’ve been greatly blessed this weekend with some wonderful times with friends. I ate entirely too much delicious food, witnessed a sweet baby’s baptism, and won a game of Wii Jeopardy. I had the opportunity to see three friends who live in other cities and catch up on their lives.
It’s been a weekend filled with terrific conversations, hugs, smiles, food and driving around. While I can’t keep running from one thing to another indefinitely, sometimes it’s great to have a full calendar and to be able to see a ton of people in a short period of time. It’s not the calendar appointments or just staying busy that make it great – it’s the quality of the time spent and memories made. Though I’m looking forward to sleep, I’m happy I seized each opportunity.
Tags: Friends, Games, Weekends
Posted in Encouragement, Friends, Fun | Comments Off
Sunday, January 9th, 2011
When you think about it, American grocery stores are truly amazing. I went to mine today, and I just marveled at the sheer amount of products. How many available brands of sandwich bread does one need? Are there people who drink ALL those flavors of wild-colored Gatorade??
I have a close friend who lives overseas, and for awhile she lived in a village. A real, kickin’-it-old-school village, where if you wanted to eat, you had to make your own food from whatever you could get at the market. If she wanted a tortilla, she couldn’t drive down the street and pick up a pack. She had to make them from scratch.
The Pioneer Principle also applies here. Obviously, I know exactly what it was like for those trailblazers trying to hunt down food – I’ve played “Oregon Trail.” (And some day my kids will think I was a pioneer, because I played this game on a black, DOS-ish computer screen using the arrow keys to move people around.) I never could control my little wagon leader when he was trying to hunt, and he would just whirl around in circles while the buffalo, rabbits and whatnot ran by, taunting him.
Geez, and to think today I was bummed that my favorite kind of tomato wasn’t in stock.
Tags: Computer, Food, Games, Pioneer Principle
Posted in Food, Fun | 1 Comment »