That's Life

It's 8PM and it's still 93 degrees outside. We northerners aren't used to such sweltering temps. If we were to expose our pale, pasty skin to that kind of sunshine, our skin would melt off of our bones like the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

So with Lady Di at a church meeting, I decided to have a family indoor activity. You may be saying to yourselves, "How could he imprison his kids indoors on such a beautiful summer evening?" Because I'm hot, that's why.

I sent the kids to the basement to bring up a board game. After the requisite ten minutes of whining, arguing and threatening over which game to choose, I invoked my fatherly authority and decided on the game Sorry.

The kids came up the stairs with the board game Life.

"Awwww, come on! Life takes almost as long to play as Monopoly!", I whined, argued and threatened.

I was overruled.

To start the game, Number One Son and I chose to go to college. Sweet Pea chose a career in law enforcement to start the game. Once N1S and I graduated we got to pick careers, he got artist and I drew doctor. "All right! I'm going to score some big bucks this game.", I rejoiced.

N1S pulled the $100,000 salary card. I pulled the $40,000.

"Son of a biscuit!"

We all got around to getting married, but it seemed that the kids were getting more valuable Life Cards than I was. They didn't seem to be paying out as much as me either. This game is just like real life.

When it was time for the kids to buy a house, they both declined. "Too much money.", they both declared.

Dad wanted a house. But he forgot to buy homeowners insurance and landed on the home burglary space and the tornado space. I was just teaching the kids a valuable lesson about the importance of insurance. And the importance of paying attention to the game.

After the house spot on the board, most of other spots are either Life cards (worth money), paydays or paying out for various life expenses. Sweet Pea's top goal, whenever we play this game, it to land on the Life card spaces that say, You have a boy, or a girl, or twins. She always wants to fill up her little car with kids. Well, the board didn't start out too well for her. She was in the lead, but would always miss the children spaces. Her brother, on the other hand, who couldn't care less about children, got all of the kid spaces, boy,girl and twins (boys of course). So his car was full. And every time he got a child, SP would look longingly at his brood and sigh with a pitiful look on her sad, stuck out lower lip, face.

But then, a miracle! She got twins! (And one of each, of course!) Then another girl. Then a boy. She was one proud Mama.

Not to mention, she was also trading the $100,000 salary card back and forth with N1S. No one seemed to want my $40,000 card and I couldn't, for the life of me, land on that darned trade salary space.

So with cars full of family, each kid made their way to retirement, collecting large paydays and Life cards along the way. They each thought they had the most money, so they both retired to Millionaire Estates.

When I had finally limped around the board, paying each kid each time I spun a ten or a one, I had only one option for retirement--Hobo Court. The board actually has Countryside Acres for the less affluent, but apparently I couldn't qualify for a loan their either.

So after paying off my student loans and adding up my meager assets, I ended up with around $200,000. I suppose I could live on that for a while, as long as I live a modest lifestyle and only eat one meal a day.

SP ended up with more money than she could count. She totalled $1,900,000 and was edged out slightly by N1S with $2,100,000.

Maybe one of them will let Dad live in their garage until he can get back on his feet again.

Life Lessons

Christmas has come and gone for another year. All of the packages have been ripped open. All of the stuffed animals have been freed from their nasty wire twist tied boxes. And all of the required assembly has been completed. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas Day.

This year, our Christmas Day got a later start thanks to Number One Son sleeping in until 8:30am. A Christmas Miracle! That was thanks to a late Christmas Eve church service. After church we let the kids open one gift before bed. They each opened new pajamas and slippers. Our kids are still at the age when cool pj's are an excitable gift. When Sweet Pea saw her 'Hello Kitty' slippers she gasped, "These are just what I've always wanted!"

They each also received new robes. Sweet Pea opened hers first and offered her old robe with the snowflakes on it to her brother. These turned out to be good gifts because they both were excited to go to bed with their new pj's.

The next morning, N1S, Lady Di and myself came downstairs and turned on the television to the Yule Log channel and waited for Sweet Pea to come downstairs before inspecting our Christmas stockings. At 9:30am N1S was sent up to check on (wake up) his sister. Sweet Pea came down and saw the empty snack plate and the note from Santa and went straight to her stocking.

She got some hair pretties and a Littlest Pet Shop TV game. "(Gasp), This is just what I always wanted!", she exclaimed. She got a lot of things she's always wanted.

N1S got some Star Wars playing cards from Santa and immediately wanted to play Star Wars black jack.

After the stockings were ripped inside out, it was time for the real fun. "Who wants to play Santa?"

"I do!", yelled Sweet Pea. And off she ran to pass out gifts. Number One Son had to go with her to read the tags, otherwise all of the gifts would make it to her pile. After a few trips of SP racing in and out of the room, tossing our gifts too us (luckily we don't gift any glass items) most of the gifts were distributed. Number One Son came in shaking his last gift. "Finally", he said, "This one sounds a little Legoish."

The kids both seemed to enjoy what they got. SP got a Lil Lovables monkey to stuff with her bear-stuffing machine. Yay, more animals!

Number One Son got an Eyeclops. This is an electronic camera that plugs into the TV and enlarges everything it sees 200 times. Both kids had fun seeing what their hair, moles and owies looked like up close.

After gifts we all went sledding and snowboarding until we were too tired to walk up the hill. Then I got the best Christmas gift I could get, a nap. "Gasp, just what I've always wanted!" At least it was until I woke up to raucous laughter and an Eyeclops up my nose displaying a nostril forest on the TV.

We ended our day playing the board game, Life, as a family. This was a gift from Gramma and Grampa Klein. Sweet Pea had a little trouble understanding about paydays and buying insurance, but she perked up when Lady Di landed on the space that said "You have a baby girl". SP kept asking which path to follow on the board to get children. Unfortunately, Lady Di was the only player to get a car load of kids in the game. This disappointed SP so much, she didn't really care how much money she had at the end of the game. All she really wanted was some children. I guess that means that Christmas really is for children.

Maybe, next Christmas.