Sean’s Birthday Festivities
August 24, 2008
Sean’s Birthday was last Thursday, but today we had his fun day. Most of the presents were opened last week, but today was his day on the town. As previously mentioned, the kids get a party with their friends every other year and then on the other year, we have a family day.
It started today with a morning of video games. He spent the morning playing some of his new Xbox 360 video games. For presents, he received Madden 09 (yes, we took the plunge again), Bourne Identity and Civilization Revolutions. He has enjoyed all of them. He and Savannah spent 2 or 3 hours this morning alone playing Civilizations. She has even tried a game or two herself. I remember the game from the PC days and still looks as addicting as I remember.
I spent a portion of my morning getting an ailing PC back working. Somehow (situation normal with Windows) a file got corrupted. I set up Windows to run chkdsk and repair the file upon reboot. Evidently, there must have more corrupt files as Windows refused to boot. Finally, had to boot to Windows CD and run chkdsk from the recovery panel. Luckily, it worked and everything seems back to normal. Back to the Birthday festivities…
After a light lunch, we headed of to town for some fun. First, we caught a movie. After some indecision and sadness from Savannah, Sean decided he wanted to see the new Mummy 3 movie. It was an excellent choice. The movie was very enjoyable – a nice mix of action and comedy. They also had a nice way of introducing the new actress (Maria Bello) playing Evie, but I will leave that for you to see in the movie. I still did miss the “old” Evie, but the movie is a winner. I can’t wait to see it again on my Blu-Ray. Yes, you will have to suspend reality once again, but that’s fine for me and movies. Of course, Savannah ended up enjoying the movie too.
After the movie, we went and played miniature golf. The weather cooperated too. It was 4:30 in the pm, so could have been hot and humid being the monsoon season. The temperature was a nice mid 80′s and it was slightly overcast, so the sun didn’t even beat down on us. Mr Papa managed to pull of a four stroke victory in the miniature golf tourney. Sean took third due to a couple of bad holes.
We finished our day off at Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner. We kind of thought Sean would pick a nicer place just cause we don’t get out very often, but we all do enjoy that place, so everyone was fine. We had some nachos, wings, popcorn shrimp and pulled pork sliders (like the mini White Castle burgers). Very good indeed, plus they had some preseason football on the TV at our table.
Back at home, unsure how we will close out the day. The kids want to play a board game, but Suzanne wants to watch the closing ceremonies of the Olympics. Either way, its been a fun family day in celebration of Sean’s 12th Birthday.
Bandera, TX – Part IV Water Park and Board Games
April 2, 2008
Finally, on Wednesday of our trip, we had a warm enough day to utilize the water park. They opened up the water park for a few weeks in November and then opened it again this spring. The park features a children’s splash area with bubbly fountains, slides and a huge bucket that fills and dumps out. It also has a small wave pool, a lily pad / monkey bars cross walk, a volley ball pool and a lazy river. The kids took turns on the slides, the cross walk, while the Moms mostly did the lazy river. They never did run the wave pool while we were in the pool, but did have it running on Saturday when we first arrived at the complex. Our only major complaint was that they didn’t seem to running enough water down the major slide so we all got stuck about half way down.
Now to completely change the subject, we played quite a few board games during the week. One of the first we played was Cruise IQ on Sunday night. We played the kids and I against Grandmother and Grandpop. This was quite fun because all of us love to cruise. There was one question that came up in the trivia game that had us all laughing. The question was “Music from the Norteno region of Mexico most closely resembles: Salsa, Tango, or Polka”. We all had a big laugh because after attending mass at the Polish church, we talked about how the Mexicans adopted the polka music of the Polish, Germans, and Czechs that settled in Southern Texas. We knew this because we, the Klasens, all performed Mexican Norteno Polkas in the Showstopper Dance Competition this year. Too funny. The next game we played was Kismet. This is a fun game to play with kids because it is about 90% luck and 10% strategy. That makes for a fun game with kids because all ages have a nearly equal chance of winning. Savannah was thrilled to be the youngest player and the winner.
I wish I could say that my other favorite game to play was as kid friendly as Kismet. The game I really loved playing was Balderdash. In this game, you can excel if you are really good at “BS”. To play the “dasher” reads an unusual word from a card out loud. Then the other players write down made up definitions of that word on their note sheet, while the “dasher” writes the true definition. Everyone turns in their sheet to the dasher who mixes them up and reads all the definitions out loud. The players then have to pick the one that they think is the true definition. The Dasher wins points if no one guesses the true definition. The other players get points by either guessing the correct answer or having others guess their bluff. This game is definitely quite a bit of fun if you have enough adults playing to provide a wide assortment of believable bluffs. You can also imagine that some of the definitions had us all cracked up. We probably had the most fun playing when it was Steve, Anne, Brett, Mary Fran, David, and Sean playing together on Sunday night. I was glad to say that I was the best “BS”er in the group and won the game that night. When we played with just the girls one morning, Savannah got a little frustrated because her bluffs weren’t so believable and she wasn’t so good at guessing the correct answer. I have to say that as far as family reunions are concerned, board games are one of the best ways to bring everyone together, laugh and have fun.
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