Weekend Fun

This past weekend was extremely busy, but very fun for us.

The weekend started Friday night with us enjoying the relatively new Blu-Ray player. We have been watching many old movies in high def. Some are simple upconverts and not a tremendous increase in resolution. Others have been remastered and are downright beautiful. This weekend we decided to watch a couple of John Wayne movies. We enjoyed The Cowboys and The Shootist. It was very nice to watch classic movies in 1080p and dolby digital sound. Both were again worth the watch.

Saturday morning, the local semi-pro football team held a football clinic for football teams in the area. Sean was very excited and thoroughly enjoyed the morning. He spent a great deal of time on agility drills and linebacker drills. He says he wants to focus on the linebacker position this year. Hopefully, the coaches will be thinking the same thing. Suzanne also held a cheerleading clinic for the local cheerleaders while the football clinic was going on.

Sean and I also had some quality time playing Xbox 360 this weekend. We downloaded a few new Xbox Live Arcade games and played them. The one that got the most time was Track and Field, the 80’s era coin up game. It’s a pure button masher, but kept us coming back. We also managed to play some 1st person shooter classics, Call of Duty and Halo 2 with other folks around the World on Xbox Live. It was midnight last night before we finally turned it.

After church today, while I was working out on the elliptical trainer, the kids surprised me and cleaned up the house. I need more workout sessions like that! As a reward, Savannah downloaded the music from Hair Spray to her Ipod. She really enjoyed watching the movie/musical. We also let Sean open up one of his birthday presents early. His birthday isn’t for another 9 days, but Suzanne and I also felt like playing one of the boardgames we had gotten him.

The present he opened early was Ticket To Ride. It was the 2004 game of the year. It’s a nice family strategy game. The board is a map of the United States with railroads connecting cities across the country. The object of the game is to “claim” as many of the routes as you can. Claiming routes gets you victory points. You also have destination cards which give you bonus victory points if you claim a route between the two cities listed.

The game was pretty simple to pick up though I am sure we will be working out the various strategies for some time to come. A game took us just over an hour to play. I managed to eek out a slim victory over Sean. The entire family enjoyed the game and it is certain to get plenty of play time in this boardgame playing family.

Sean will be getting a couple of other boardgames for his birthday, so I will have to report on those after we try them. The majority of his birthday presents will be redoing his bedroom in a New England Patriots theme. I still think he should have gone with the Lions.