Lots of new things.

It's been an eventful and exciting start to the year with lots of new things.  For a start it's a new decade for me, although my change-hating girls have determined that I am now thirty-ten, as they don't want me to leave my thirties.  I had some lovely presents including this cushion that K modified specially for me.

It's Mr Happy!

Another first was a trip to Leicester to Orchestra Unwrapped, organised by a lovely HE mum, J.  It's a 'schools' event, that also welcomes home edders, aimed at 7-11 years to introduce them to orchestral music.  There were a number of pieces to listen to and a specially written audience participation piece, which you get a cd and booklet to prepare for.  We all really enjoyed it and K & M are keen to go again next year.

The really big (although rather small) new things, however, are Beatrice and Bob.  Shortly before Christmas, some friends discovered that one of their two newly acquired young rats had arrived with them already pregnant.  We have been talking about the girls having rats as pets for over two years and indeed had agreed to them having them for Christmas just over 12 months ago, but they decided that they needed to do more research about looking after them first.  The subject had been broached again though and when we were invited to go and meet the babies when they were just a couple of weeks old, K & M were very keen.  The babies were incredibly cute and one thing lead to another and 10 days ago we brought Beatrice and Bob home.

M and Bob.

Bob!

Beatrice.

Not everyone's cup of tea, I know, but they really are great pets.  They come out of the cage for exercise and exploration every day and K & M are doing pretty well with looking after them and helping to clean the cage (they couldn't manage it by themselves yet, as it's really big and takes some doing).

In other news, thank you letters are all finished (just), even the unnecessary ones (to each other, us and people they saw and thanked at the time) although for the first time they have decided to send a joint thank you for presents that were for both of them.  We have also finished reading Piratica and are now well on the way to finishing the first Molly Moon book, which the girls were given for Christmas by their occasionally childsitter (I'm not allowed to call it babysitting), who is a lovely teenager who lives just across the road and occasionally plays with them just because.  And finally, K has agreed somewhat reluctantly to write a review for me for a book she borrowed from the library, Precious and the Monkeys by Alexander McCall Smith, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she has to say about it.

A game-filled Christmas and New Year!

We have been given several fantastic games and played even more, so I thought they deserved a blog post of their own.

We received four games for Christmas, one of which was one we already have, one was a suggestion I came up with when asked what we would like, another was one some of us had played before and the final one was completely new to us.

The one we already had (and in fact K was given it for her birthday in October as well!), was Forbidden Island.  K, M and I first encountered it when we went to the board game cafe in Oxford when we visited Uncle S and Aunty P a while back and indeed I spent some birthday money on the game as a result.  The girls and I all really like this game, which is a cooperative one, although A thinks it's okay but finds it gets a bit samey if played too often.

The game that I suggested, was one that we had come across at one of the Imagination Gaming sessions at our local library, Take it Easy.  It involves places hexagonal tiles on a board to try to make coloured pipes reach from one side to the other unbroken, which gives points according to colour and length of pipe.  It's particularly good because it can be played solo as well as in groups of up to six and it involves a bit of maths at the end.

Part of our marathon Boxing Day games session.

Concept was the one that some of us had played before, again at a session at the library with Imagination Gaming.  It is very clever (if somewhat frustrating at times!).  We haven't played it competitively, but I don't think it's necessary to do so to get plenty out of it.  You place the markers by the icons on the board to get across the word, name or phrase on the card (there is a choice of nine options with varying difficulty).  This was one of A's turns in which he used just three counters - the main counter is on literature/writing/book, and the other two on woman/female/wife/feminine and small/lower/below.  Answer hidden below the picture - highlight to reveal!

Little Women

The final game which was, as I said, completely new to all of us, is a card game called Sleeping Queens and it was another hit.  It's fairly quick and reasonably straightforward and can be played with 2 to 5 players (although it's much quicker with 2).

We played all of these on Boxing Day, along with a game of Monopoly.  K & M do not employ classic tactics when playing this and generally decide to be 'nice' to each other and either A or me, depending on who out of the two of us does something that they don't approve of (which is usually buying either one of their favourite properties, Old Kent Road for K, The Angel Islington for M, or a property of a colour that someone already has, thus 'scuppering' them from being able to build houses).  Being nice generally consists of attempting to ignore when the approved person lands on their property.  They are also far more concerned by securing their favourite property than trying to make money.

Boxing Day Monopoly.

The day after Boxing Day we spent a lovely few days with my parents, seeing various family and friends.  K & M were particularly excited to meet their new cousin, Treacle, who is a rescue greyhound that Uncle M had got just a week earlier.

On the way home on New Year's Eve, we visited friends for lunch and more games!  There we encountered two more new games including Mexican Train, a domino game (but the dominoes go up to double twelve), which we all enjoyed, and Sequence, which can be played individually with two or three players or with teams (in multiples of 2 or 3) as we did.  The girls also had a game of The Game of Life Zapped, which they really like and we finished off with a classic game of Pictionary.

Today was yet more games and lunch with more friends, who had requested we take over some of our new ones that I had mentioned on Facebook.  So as well as Sleeping Queens, Concept, Take it Easy and the delightfully bonkers Big Fat Tomato Game (which we have had for a while), all of which we took with us, we were introduced to Moustache Smash.  There were eight of us all together, so we couldn't all play all of the games and K also played (and won!) The Settlers of Catan, which we have borrowed previously having been introduced to it by them.


In other news, both my girls, but M in particular, have decided that I over-share, so although they are still okay with me blogging, it'll be a bit less personal to respect their feelings on the matter.