I used to be involved in a direct sales company, Simply Fun, that sold board games. I loved the idea of playing games as a family and stayed in long enough to get one of each kind of game they sell. I love all the games and if I were a better saleswoman, I could see this company doing well. Anyway, despite my enthusiasm for the games, my family pretty much ignored them. Until recently.

Cassie and Eric are finally at the age that games are appealing. So they sneak into my closet and take out a game to explore. Part of the appeal is the sneaking into mom’s closet I’m sure.

The latest game they’ve been playing is called Take Your Pick. It is a card game. Each card has two words on it. Usually opposite or contradictory in meaning. Like “Hot” and “cold”. Or “Indoors” or “Outdoors”. You are supposed to take three cards and think about the other person you are playing with. What would they choose? It’s kind of like a personality game where you try to analyze the other person’s personality. What do they like? Great game to play between brother and sister.

Cassie needs help reading some of the words and then thinking of a question related to the words to ask Eric. They both need help figuring out what some words mean. Great vocabulary builder for both of them, and Cassie is practicing her reading skills. She is getting much better and I predict she’ll be a full on reader by the time she is 8. A little later than our other 4, but you can see how the process is just so different for her. One thing I’ve observed is that when she is reading she does not look ahead to the other words, but actually stops on each word and ponders the meaning. Sometimes she begins to question the author of the story. Like this simple reader I found called “This is a Fish”. In the story where the kids see a whale at an aquarium, one character says, “that is a big fish”. Cassie paused in her reading to scold the book. “It’s a whale you stupid kid!”. Reading further, the other kids do correct the boy, minus the word “stupid”.

Other games played this week:

Take Four – Discovery Toys – a scrabble type game with letter tiles.

Ooga – Simply Fun – memory type game with dinosaur cards.

Breaking Down the House –  Simply Fun - dice game where you build a house by rolling dice. Three die alike and an earthquake strikes (the house falls down).

Psychonauts – playstation 2 video game

Lots of TV watching as we just got cable at the air station office. So far we aren’t directing their viewing too much…lots of iCarly and Nick cartoons so far. I also got a new DVD free in the mail from the History Channel – America, The story of Us. So we’ve been watching a bit of that a night. Along with a new hulu.com show we found….or an old show actually, Eerie Indiana – spooky stories told by a 12 year old kid about his weird town he lives in.

One thing to mention about my kids and their game playing. They sometimes ask me to tell them the rules. Once they get the basic concept down, though, then their own rules come into play. Rarely do they keep score. Eric used to have an issue with winning and losing (hated losing of course) which made playing games with him a nightmare a few years ago. So now, his rule always is, there is no keeping score. You just play for fun. And he loves to figure out the rule and do the opposite. And make that the new rule. Hard to explain. You’d have to see him in action. But thankfully Cassie agrees.

Two weeks ago I took the two youngest kids half way around the world to visit my homeland, and their heritage, Canada. Our specific destination was Powell River, BC where my family lived. On the way we passed through Vancouver, my birthplace.

The journey there had much to be desired. But any travel long distance on planes with kids is stressful. It started out with good intentions, but reality is…..plane rides and waiting at airports for 9 hour layovers in a foreign country has a lot to be desired. However, Eric and Cassie tried to make the most of it. Here they are posing at the Osaka Airport. In Japan, the kids played hide and seek, rode around on the luggage car (with mom as driver), learned about Japanese Yen and foreign money exchange rates, sampled Japanese Ice cream and gum. By the time we arrived in Seattle, they were quite worn out!

We had many adventures and I hope to be able to record them over the next few days. Stay tuned.