January 24th, 2010

Sunday dawned clear and beautiful. Last night, (Saturday night) Jim and Ramie and Caitlen came up on a heavy snowy night and we all went to Soldier Hollow to go tubing. This... was... fun. The kids loved it, and Jennie and I and Jim went up and down the hill 7 times before joining Ramie in the lodge for hot chocolate! It was a beautiful night, snowed the whole time, it was just great. We had Papa Murphy's Pizza at the house before we went. It was great. At night Asher and Jennie watched a scary movie called Paranormal Activities. They dragged me in for 2 minutes but I had enough and went down and worked with Riley on Disasternecessities.com. He's really helping me! After Jennie and Asher watched the scary movie together, Jennie and I watched the first half of the comedy The Hangover. I have to give The Hangover 4 stars. It was a GREAT movie. Not just funny, but clever. We watched the second half this morning. I went over this morning to my Dad's house to take care of the dogs while he's out of town. Jennie and I took a long walk with Churchill (our St. Bernard) and found a nice secluded place where we mediated together. Jennie had a really cool vision. Church just loved the snow! Asher and Riley worked their asses off shoveling the steep and huge driveway. Plus Asher did some serious work cleaning the basement. It looks AWESOME. Good job Asher. Ame slept till 1:30 the lazy slug. If I had known she was asleep I would have waken her up.

Then Jennie and I watched the Indianapolis Colts beat the NY Jets, and as I type this we are watching the Saints and the Vikings play. Jennie is on the bike. Friday Jennie and I went to Soldier Hollow to buy tickets and went to dinner and then we watched the romantic comedy The Ugly Truth. Good movie that one too.

I read some more of The Way of the Superior Man this morning, finally finishing it by reading Chapter 51. Amazing stuff that book is. Changing my life, or it will, if I let it. :)

Tonight is Bake Potatoes, Steak, and frozen peas. The potatoes are cooking. Jennie and I are gearing up for work tomorrow. She's not thrilled about it. I wish I could make enough money for her to quit. It is my full intention.

Well, that was this weekend. It was nice. It was fun. Relaxing, but there is a stress in the air. I hope to even that out this week, but I get the feeling it will be challenging. I'll let you know how it turns out. Kids are out of school tomorrow. I can't believe how often they let the kids out in this school district. Ridiculous.

January 23rd, 2010 - Saturday

How you all doing? I hope everyone is well. I'm sitting her Saturday morning in the new house and I took a moment to look out over the fields filled with snow, and was filled with gratitude. My dad is out of town this weekend, so we went over to his house and fed the dogs and cats. This makes me sad. No way we can take any more animals, just no way, but those little Chihuahua's of my Mom's are so sad there alone. My dad doesn't give them the attention they need. And the cats. Poor Eddie, the paralyzed cat, (from the waist down) misses her so bad. My Dad doesn't love them and take care of them like he should.

Anyway, we went to dinner at the Bear Dance Cafe. Ame had her friend Ruby over to stay the night, and Riley had his friend Jordan over to stay the night. The boys stayed at the office after a satisfying day of work and played games with their friends.

So, a boring snap shot of life here in Snowy Heber. Today however the kids go skiing all day at Sundance, Jennie has a hair appointment in Salt Lake City, and if she goes to that (she's thinking of cancelling) I'll do some work that needs to be done. Tonight however, fun fun fun. Jennie's brother Jim is coming up with his wife Raimi and daughter Caitlen and we are going tubing at Soldier Hollow! Big fun family night.

You may be wondering why I haven't updated this blog as much. It's because of Facebook. Spend too much time on Facebook. That reaches a different group of people than this does. I've always said, Facebook needs to add a blog feature. Google should buy facebook and integrate it with Blogger. Just my billion dollar idea.

Oh, Asher's birthday is coming up February 12th! How exciting. Sixteen. Can you believe it? Sixteen! Wow. Okay, If you are lucky you will get soldier hollow pictures and notes. Something worth writing about is bound to happen. Goodness! :)

So I held my annual Game Day at my house. Yes you would think owning a game store I would have more than one game day a year, and usually we do, but we do this one every year as kind of a tradition. So I'll run down the gaming for you and let you know how it all worked out.

We opened with Dominion. If you haven't played Dominion yet, go to this link, buy the game, and play it. Seriously. Don't hesitate. If you were in the retail store, I would give you a copy, and tell you to go play it, and if you like it, come back and pay me. If you don't like it, bring it back. Everyone I do this with comes back and pays for it. Not one person has brought it back and said they didn't like it. Period. So go get it. Now. Matt Drake even wrote a wonderful review about it, HERE. We played it, and the Seaside Expansion for it, for hours. Awesome fun with friends. Good game.



Then... we moved to Roborally, which was just rereleased over Christmas, and wow, it's just a fun game. Never played it before, so it was new. But it was easy to pick up, and it was fun. Here is the thing with Roborally. Things are going to go wrong, and because of that, you can't plan out a perfect strategy, which can really bother the hell out of you. BUT... if you take it as a FUN game and enjoy all the crazy things that occur because you can't plan for everything, then it turns out quite fun. Parker got turned around once and screwed up his move so badly once that I almost fell on the floor laughing as he kept screwing up. It's a fun game, and can accomodated many players and was good for some great laughs.

Then we played Small World. I've played this three times before, and it DOES keep getting better. The first time I was unimpressed, but by this fourth time, I have to say I liked it a lot better. We'll see if it keeps growing on me. I won, so that makes a difference. It's the BIG game this year, and Matt Drake again reviewed it and loved it. I was lukewarm at first, but it IS getting better.




Finally we played Pictionary, and damn that was FUN. What a fun game for couples and teams and just a lot of laughs. I don't even sell Pictionary . I should fix that. It's such a great game I can recommend it to everyone. We play on this HUGE white board I have and it's fun see it show up on the big board. We are SERIOUS as pictionary in my family! :) Ben and B'andra managed to include a certain piece of the male anatomy in EVERY SINGLE PICTURE they drew. It almost put me on the ground.




Okay, the next day, having played so many games I wasn't even CLOSE to burning out, so I pulled out Tales of the Arabian Nights, a game Matt Drake reviewed and recommended and I've wanted to play for a while now. Me and my daughter got it set up and then discovered the Quest Cards were missing. So that was a BUMMER. Can't really review that. Hopefuly Z-Man Games will fix that. We also opened the new Axis & Allies Pacific, but found that one of the treys of chits was missing. I think the Japanese were missing, or doubled, and no Chinese. So that game was unplayable. Let's hope Wizards of the Coast fixes THAT! Then we opened Ghost Stories, ANOTHER game that Matt reviewed and liked, and was recommended to us by Sheridan as well, but by that time the Arizona Packers game was on so we never got to play it.









Did anyone see that game? Packers had an AMAZING comeback. AMAZING. But they just couldn't pull it off. They need a better Defense. :)

Anyway, that was the gaming weekend. This week instead of game night we are going rock climbing, I believe. I'll let you know how that turns out! :)

New Year

We had a great Christmas and New Year, and of course tons of family and pictures and all that stuff but I'm so far behind on this blog. Mostly because of Facebook. It's so much easier to put stuff up there, but I'm going to make an effort Sunday to catch up and show pictures and life and all that good stuff from our lives over Christmas.

Jason