Avast Yea - It was a cannon ball bash

[threadwalker]

The pirate game was well attended. The birthday boy was very pleased with how the day went except that every single person playing took a swipe at him at the start the game. But of course - how else do gamers show their affection! Thanks to Admiral Stanley, who runs a great game. We had a mix of new players and old players. As expected, it started late. But the boisterousness was good and echoed throughout the house. I believe Drew took over 2 other ships, ending with a fleet of three at the end of the game. I think the decision was that even though Unka had the treasure, he'd lost his ship and it was reasonable to presume Drew would sail away, starve Unka out and then come back for the treasure.

The food was hearty and gamer oriented. I got up at 6am to start a pork shoulder in the slow cooker. I did the exact same recipe on stove top (one for lunch, one for dinner). I did two batches of grandma's bean with meat (one for lunch, one for dinner). I did potato salad and Hungarian tarts for lunch. I had cinnamon carrots for dinner (I think only the two mothers and the kids ate the carrots). I also broiled chicken for dinner. Basically, it was a lot of meat and starch. The gamers were happy and ate almost every scrap.

Two guests brought dessert - Boston Cream Pie and a Kahlua cream Pie from Bakers' Square. I put out blueberries and cream. It was almost gone by the time I went to bed. (Well, except for the blueberries, of course). My kitchen needs about another hour and it will be retrieved from chaos. If the spouse helps, it will only take 20 minutes. Guess what we're doing tonight?

One of the moms who showed up was not a gamer and not into any of our hobbies, so there wasn't much parallel mom-gaming for quite a while. She's the spouse of a co-worker and their whole family came at the invitation of my spouse, which is totally cool with me - the more the merrier. I'd never met her before and wasn't sure how to make her comfortable; so far as I could tell, the only thing we had in common was we were mothers and our husbands had the same job. She was very nice and I did my best to hostess the 'gaming widows' in the family room and backyard while we simultaneoulsy watched 6 kids ranging from 2 yrs to 8 years old. After we exhausted all the safe non-SCA topics you can discuss I asked the non-SCA mom if she liked board games. In hindsight, I think that she was probably thinking of Monopoly et al when she said "yes". I don't think we own anything by Milton Bradley. What I selected for us to choose from was Gloom, Plague and Pestilence, Guillotine, Catan, and Castle. She was indecisive (possibly overwhelmed) and sirst (who showed up without Titan - booo!) chose Catan. It was very friendly and we all made an effort to help her play well. sirst kept "outing" my soft-skill strategies, like when I say "oooh, look who's winning over there" as I build the longest road. The house joke is, "Don't look at me, I'm a fuzzy bunny." (Later David kept using that line and it didn't convince anyone even after he was coming in last). Anyway, in the spirt of helping someone surrounded by gaming sharks, sirst was very open about everyone's strategy and probably made the experience that much more enjoyable for our unsuspecting, non-gaming guest. She even loittered at the game after saying she had to head home for the evening and I hope it's because she was having a good time. I hope that when the husband gets a report back from his co-worker it isn't that we're all a bunch of freaks and loons. Not that we aren't, just that we hid that part well.

On the differences of mothers and parenting:

The kids were mostly girls, so it was loud and involved setting up tea parties hither and yon. My son was good with the dolls and the impromptu tea parties - we've given him dolls and he used to rock them to sleep when I was rocking the baby to sleep. But he doesn't play like the other girls. He kept wanting there to be "cheers" and clunking of tea cups as if you're toasting with beer, which didn't go over well with the older girls. He also wanted to turn it into good guys vs bad guys drinking tea. I'm not sure how that works, but it made sense to him. He was over-ruled by the girls and periodically dropped out of the domestic scene to roll dice with dad and aim cannon balls. However, at one point he and his little sister got the swords and light sabers and some wacking commenced. I don't think the other girls weren't prepared for actually being hit. I watched Stinky bop one in the face. I said something like "hey, lets not hit in the face or head". While he turned to respond to me the 3-year old angel with curls bopped him in the side of the head as he was saying "yes mommy". Then he turned and bopped her in the ribs or something. There was no crying and they didn't quit; they stood there wacking at each other. However, not 2 minutes later the curly haired angel ran to her mom saying "that boy hit me" and shed some tears. I cracked up and informed the mom that the wacking was a two way street. She piped to the kids, "Let's not do that, someone will get hurt. Just wack at each others swords." My response was, "Well, if they wack each other and they get hurt, then they won't do it again." I was told I was "such a good mom for boys".

But that's how I was raised!?! Anyway, it was funny to watch the kids deal with different boundaries and to be hanging out with moms who were essentially like-minded in discipline. All the moms and dads were good at keeping an eye on the kids as they roamed the house and the yard. I think the most challenging was that there was so much junk food and of course the kids zeroed in on that, so trying to maintain any sort of lofty eating habits was a waste of time when there's so much yummy junk food.

We ate dinner outside during an interlude just as it was getting dark. Our kids' light sabers light up and have sound effects when they hit something, so I showed them how to turn them on. The curly haired angel said something like "ooooooooh" when it light up and promptly started wacking stuff. Her dad was so proud that she liked the light saber and it was cool to see the look on his face as his three year old went running off to brandish the sword that was glowing red in the dark.

More blah on games: We played a 6-person Catan game from 8pmish to 11pm. I unexpectedly won. I had a very weak starting position and was stewing in my woe for an hour watching everyone else chug along. When I finally started to make some headway, I went from having 3 points on the board to 8 in just a few rounds. I was living with the Ritter/Robber on my tiles at that point and constantly having my resources swiped. I had to get Ritter Cards just to defend myself. Everytime Francessca did something particularly strategic, she said she was being "sneaky" and learning from me. hehh, heh, heh. She's so "Jane Austin" about that stuff. I love seeing good strategy. Anyway, I won and if I hadn't, Unka, who was right after me, would have. So I snatched the victory in the nick of time. It was a very good game, though and the most common number to come up was "9". I love dissecting that sort of stuff afterwards.

F&D went home with their kids after the Catan game (11pm ish). We hot-tubbed. Then we watched "Dodgeball" with Ben Stiller and Vince Vaugn (I love that movie). My favorite quote "If you can dodge a ball, you can dodge a wrench" and the coach commences throwing wrenches at them. "Pain teaches." Then J&V went home.

I probably should have gone to bed, But "A Walk in the Clouds" came on and it's such a beautiful romance, I had to stay up and watch that. I think I was gooey eyed through the whole thing. I think I turned in at 5 am or so. The kids were up around 9 and I packed them up and we went to the Oakland Zoo so the spouse could work.

It was definitely a very full weekend. I started Unka's 15th century duds yesterday. I'm not entirely pleased with the hose, but I'm not mocking them up because there isn't time. Ah, well. "Pain teaches".

Comments

[fighter-chick.livejournal.com]

I'm bummed I didn't make it! (But I'm very happy that my office is now 2/3 unpacked, and I can walk around in it.)

[beanolc.livejournal.com]

Same here! By the time I realized I could stop by I was mentally too wiped to get in my car.

(My office is a disaster, but it's that grad student-English major kind of disaster.)