A Games Day Finally Blogged

Firstly, apologies to my readers on my tardiness, I have been very busy the last fortnight :) and that said I shall regale you with part of it!

Last weekend, Saturday the 20th, we had one of our triannual games days. To date I haven't taken any photos during the 3 years we've run it because I wanted everyone to relax; but now I have a blog their comfort wasn't so important, kidding kidding!! I asked everyone hesitantly if I should and it was very graciously tolerated (although to be not too intrusive, I didn't take many - enough :p - photos).

So you have a very privileged peek into the rare and secluded world of gamers doing geeky fun things ;).

It was a busy week in general and I had polished up the house a bit. I finally finished Blythe's room, it is now free of dust and mold and while I was at it I did the windows and banisters and stairs! climbing up to the ceiling with my gloves, chux and tea tree, eucalyptus oiled hot water :).
This time everyone got to bring some food, normally I bring out all the snackies and drinks and lunch and feed people to my hearts content :D (its a european family tradition thing ;)) but I aquessed and shared the responsibility.

Up bright and cheery at 6am I decided I'd braid my hair for the week, an hour later I took a rest and prepared salad and meat for our lunch rolls then back to my hair to finish off. Our first guests, Cheery and Tin arrived at 8:45am and we learnt Cheery's new game Pandemic. Its a popular family game, and we enjoyed it but it lacked a challange seeming to be mostly luck based, but it was a nice change to play a cooperative game.

Del and K :).

Z and Dee arrived having dropped off their kiddies, freeee! and started a 2 player Lord of the Rings game which is similar to Stratego and good fun. They won one each, how friendly (though you should have heard the cheers of "I crushed him!" lol :D ). Del and K arrived with a flourish in Del's new car repleat with personalised number plate. She was still glowing with excitement after recieved it a week before :). Osca snuck in around this time (you owe me a hug!) and a 5 player Smallworld game commenced so Tin and I had a round of 2 player Dominion.

We were only missing Tin's Lotus to do our driveway proper justice ;). What is it with geeks and hot cars? Mwahahaha... wait... where's mine? :( (its the only unwashed one there hehe)

Cheery's friend Michael arrived, whom we hadn't met before, a fencing buddy, and we all had some yumming lunch. Cheery made a much needed executive decision and brought out Thurn and Taxis, being a bit drowsy after lunch I didn't pay any attention to the rules lol (woops, sorry!) and being generally clueless got to go last :). It was a 4 player game but Cheery stayed to steer us through it, luckily he did as we had plenty of questions. I didn't really like it until half way through when the penny dropped and I 'got it'. Then I loved it :), can't wait to play it again when I know what I'm doing ;).

The group in the other room played Last Night on Earth so we snaffled that after them. They had cracked open 'the BIG one' - RuneWars, our token big game for the day. It definately lasted the longest, but wasn't too bad at 2-3hrs.

Clockwise starting from bottom left person- Cheery, Osca, Phill, Tin playing RuneWars. One game I was looking forward to playing - Dungeon Lords - didn't get played, its a bit involved and a 4 player game so suited for a last late night finish.. maybe next time :).

Our Last Night on Earth (yay zombies!) came to a nail biting finalee: we were on our last round (before the zombies won by default of running out of rounds) and our particular senario had us with one last special zombie to kill. We abandoned any sense of self preservation, charged and surrounded him.. it.. but as luck would have it all our attacking was brought low by bad rolls. Was pretty funny :D, and Z got his goal and won ;), all hail the zombie master!

Clockwise from left- me (thats 20 braids!), Del, Z, Michael, Dee. And the happy -kid free ;)- couple, sweet :).

At this point my memory gets a bit fuzzy but Dee and Z left to have dinner with the family and Michael had to get home, the rest of us had left over rolls, and I think we played Smallworld, half of whom had missed out on the last game of it. I was very proud of my races especially when Cheery snorted each time I picked one and said 'of course!' in disgust ;). I was pretty sure Cheery and I were neck to neck that we did our best to kill each other off, not realising Tin was insidously creeping up behind! Tin came second after all. Ps I won >:).

Phill (since he's called Bo, Morks, Sharks and Jarks respectively by friends) and Osca had a 2 player Agricola game where Phill took the first player option and Osca didn't worry because he had big plans! After that he kept bypassing the first player option because there was always something else that was more valuable, but Phill kept taking them because he had first player, it was a pretty funny game hearing Osca go "Oh no!" over and over.

Another game Cheery pulled out of his hat trick box, I didn't play this one so I have no memory of it's name. Poor K is a night shift worker and usually succumbs on the lounge.
Tin and his usual antics :D, I'd love to say I caught this with professional photographic finesse but the truth is our slowly dying chairs gave way beneath K and he wouldn't reenact it for me! But our resident funny man was happy to ablige ;).
Phill had gone shopping and I refused to let him buy the lunch foods because he's budgetly minded and I like to spoil our guests with yummy stuff. So he'd bought some ice cream and not told me because he 'didn't want me to eat them'... so when I went shopping I got some too!! Whats worse his were half price on sale lol!!

Z came back and Del and K, Cheery and Tin went home so the last few brave (stupid ;)) souls finished the day with a big favourite - Funkenslaag (Power Grid). By that stage everything seemed pretty funny :). Phill stole my only good spots in the game again :P and I got cross. I soon realised I was being a wet blanket and fun was more important and forgave him ;) lol. Ha, who won?, it was a fun game who cares? ;) Phill of course...

Epic Funkenslaag game we started sometime after 11pm..? I thought it was a pretty close game, but Phill out finessed us with some end play, and it was pretty late lol so who knows if I was half accurate :).
0.20 on the play school clock when we glanced at our kitchen and decided to leave it till tomorrow lol.
Lollies party mix was the favourite for the day, although cherry and almond dark chocolate was a hit and the chippies and snack deforestation was devastating.

Thanks everyone for coming :D. I can't wait for the next one, I think they get better every time.

Btw, next Canada blog coming soon! Sorry, off to the Gold Coast this coming Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday! Wish me luck, Dad and I are playing in the restricted pairs for the Gold Coast Bridge Congress.

Vancouver Island - part 2, The Bug Zoo

Who thinks 'bugs? no thanks' ?

Like bugs, don't like bugs, find them interesting, find them creepy, no matter what you think this is one place I would highly recommend to everyone! It was 2 large joined rooms with glass enclosures (varied big fish tank sizes) with different insects and arachnids along all the walls. You pay a small fee and there is a 'tour guide' who gives a continuous tour who you can join at anytime and leave when he starts at your spot again. He was very informative and would take the creatures out (most of the time) and let you hold them.

There were mostly stick/leaf/mantis insects, beetles, spiders, unique insects (water bees), an ant colony, cockroaches. The ant colony was fascinating, these particular ants would chew up leaves and spit them out in particular ant rooms which would then cultivate fungi off the leaves which is what they actually lived off. I tried hard to get close up shots of the fungi rooms, the ants, anything, it just refused to focus (something for me to learn about!), but I got a panorama shot for you :). It was pretty cool, they had 'tunnels' covering half of 1 room, across the short end of said room and part of the other wall. They had a 2 rubbish tips and a dump room which had a huge pile of dead ants. We learnt all about the hive mind and if the queen would die then the entire colony would lose the will to live and cease their activities. When the queen produced another queen it would accompany it with a whole swarm of flying males whose sole purpose was to mate with that 1 queen and die. The new queen would establish a new nest and could proceed to lay a staggering amount (30 million might be close), that 1 mating was all it needed. All the ant types in the colony were female.


We learnt what each bug did in defense, each was very different, 1 beetle would play dead, 1 would flip a huge somersault, 1 would shoot super stinky oil on you, 1 cockroach would hiss at you. The tarantula was very interesting, if threatened it would rub its back legs together and on its abdomen and fling its hairs at you, which would be hard to get off but cover your eyes, nose and mouth with the most itchy stinging sensation ever. Personally I'd prefer to get bitten! Its fangs were an inch long (curved) and the penetration would do more injury then the venom.

top left- tarantula, thats my hand, my hand, my hand! top right-- centipede, I'd never seen one in real life until I moved to Woombye and we've had quite a few drown in our pool. One night, while watching a movie in the darkened garage there was this scurry, like a big rat or lizard, we jumped up and turned on the lights and this centipede went from one end of the room to the other in a blink, I had a brief look but it looked at least a foot long. We never found it, but I've been looking for 'the one that got away' ever since. Apparently they don't grow that big.
bottom left- millipede, both centipedes and millipedes do not have 100 and 1000 legs, they in fact have anything from 10 to hundreds, but never exactly 100 :). bottom right- scorpion under ultraviolet light.

We saw the tarantula at the end of the tour actually and I'd been fearlessly interested in assorted creatures, handling them and encouraging the kids but this was, well, the big one. When I was younger I had arachnophobia; I know it was because it grew over time until it was irrational. It reached a point where a friend decided to chase me around a house holding a dead spider and trapped me in a room by putting it in the open doorway. I couldn't step over it.
After that I could recognise my fear for what it was and how involuntary it was and I could only pray about it. I had opportunity to get up close and personal with spiders over the next year in biology and at home resealing the house's outside wall and my fear turned into fascination. But, they still creep me out! So when he asked if I'd like to hold the tarantula I knew I had to; I held out my hand, looked at the wall and made my mind blank (as if I was preparing to swallow tablets lol) and realised I was holding my breath after he put it on my hand. When I slowly unwound my subconsciously tensed muscles I actually enjoyed the experience!! It was like a mouse, and it was so big I can imagine how people could get attached to them as pets.
I challenge you all to hold one sometime in your life!

We learnt the black widow was identical to our red back in all but the red stripe. And our red backs actually ate their mates a higher percentage of the time then the black widow! The less time the male spent mating the higher its chances of being eaten, which in turn would do the species a favor by sustaining the female when it obviously wasn't use for much else ;).

black widow. She had the most amazing web, finest I've seen, it looked like cloth, you couldn't see the strands.

The millipede was a hit too, its legs were segmented along its body in twos - two would go forward to meet the two in front and then backward to meet the two behind, it was fascinating. And to let 1 walk on you it felt like .. like smooth, rippling velcro walking on you, but not prickly.

There was a scorpion which Blythe held, actually I couldn't bring myself to hold it! and we saw its luminescence under ultra violet light; there is no definitive reason why they do that.. This particular 1 doesn't use its sting, but its pincers which could still do damage but was probably therefore safer to hold. All of the handled creatures were quite passive, we were still encouraged to leave them in their natural habitat if we came across them though ;).


All in all the Bug Zoo is probably in the top 4 things we did in the whole trip and probably the top 2 for the kids (snow being the other one ;)). I was also excited to have the chance to take some macro shots, but when they were in our hands they wouldn't stop moving, and in the glass reflections get in the way. Still a lot of photographic fun :).

We nosed around the bug shop for 5 mins before bolting back to the Empress for our second super special treat. Mum had bought us, as a surprise, a high tea (I've never had one before). Mum asked for a gluten free 'tea', so we started with strawberries and cream and then were served with their specially made Empress tea of which the kids tried too (1 sip in their own special tea cups). 3 tiered cake towers were next with sandwiches (cucumber, smoked salmon + cream cheese, mushroom truffle pate, pickled ginger + salmon pate), scones + jam + cream, petit four cakes.


I wasn't sure of the term petit four and had mistakenly thought it was 'petit mor', so I googled and discovered petit mort was something else entirely lol!! That would have been a funny mistype!


The food was delicious, although the kids were fussy and didn't eat any sandwich except mushroom and cucumber, so I filled up on sandwiches myself :), not such a bad idea if it stops me from eating too much cake ;). We could ask for more of anything we wanted, so I got the kids more scones so they wouldn't eat too much cake either! and we all had half of each type of cake.
The maitre d and host (waiter) were so professional and polite and I was quite nervous at first in our setting of the kids being noisy and well.. kid like :), but after a bit mum reassured me that everyone else there were tourists like us ;), so we relaxed, pulled out the cameras and settled into our normal geekiness.

We were packed off with souvenir boxes of their tea, and went searching for an op shop mum remembered from last time. We popped back into the bug zoo shop on the way. Funny the contrast of the day :) - bug zoo - high tea - op shop. We finally found it, we wanted to get some decently priced snow gear, parkas and water proof shoes! (we'd accidentally left both our coats at home, what a thing to forget in our dash to the airport). We were highly successful, everyone got fitting snow pants but me, mum got a down feather parka, me a waterproof super coat and a few pairs of shoes lol.

top- Parliament building, designed by Francis Rattenbury an architectural protege at age 19, himself an interesting story (google it sometime). bottom- I forgot to include a picture of the wax museum from yesterday, Blythe was much taken with the princesses :).

We grabbed an organic juice/smoothy for dinner and tracked down a button + knitting shop for me, but when we got there we had no time left (and no money, I so need a credit card), and ran for the bus. They were having a Christmas parade hours later but the streets were absolutely packed with people waiting and the road was blocked off. We managed to get into contact with out bus driver and met him else where, and watched our first hockey game on the ferry. Devlin was way over tired and I had to give him smacks :(. Vancouver at night was full of great photo opportunities; even only half a week into our trip we'd already decided if/when we came back we'd hire a car so we could take photos ;). We got home at 9:30pm and found that the hotel concierge had actually cancelled our booking when booking us out yesterday! So we got a different room on the other side.

left- the Fairmont Empress Castle. right- parliament at night.

Next blog is our Vancouver explorations!

Daily Interlude

3 prints from Scarlett Cat which I got framed, quite proud of how they turned out :), hanging on my study wall

Hi friends :), well I've been reading a few blogs and I was inspired by Whirliegig to join 365 Project and by her and other bloggers to start taking photos of my daily life.. things about the house, things that you wouldn't think of taking a photo of unless you were actively thinking about it. In fact even though I've started to frame everything I see in my mind's virtual camera lens I still miss things. I wish I could have caught Devlin coming home for the third day in a row with mud all over his school uniform (before sticking it in the wash)!
Well, I've been having fun and I thought I'd like to share a bit of my daily life with you. Life seems pretty mundane really, until you see beauty everywhere where before you saw just daily stuff.

left- brunch on the rocking chair. middle- my bedroom has been 'storing' too small kids clothes, I intended to do the ebay thing, but I'm thinking I'd be happy just to get rid of them lol. right- Blythe had a school experiment where she grew a sunflower (which died when we went on holidays) so every now and then they decide to plant whatever seeds they come across, I have no idea whats growing in there now lol.

So I had a really productive day yesterday, which happens every few weeks; I wonder if it had anything to do with my computer dying in the morning ;). It all started when I opened a youtube video (I love Sarah Jane), its an AU cheapy zombie flick well done (I have a zombie fetish) and mozilla crashed on me. There on in mozilla was not happy and it soon created a crashing chain reaction and I was visited upon by the blue screen of death and automatic reboots. Suffice to say I laid the poor beast to rest until hubby could get home and look at it and then free of distraction I had a whole house to keep my attention! Funny how when I REALLY REALLY need to do some (lots) of work my computer kindly takes itself out of the picture :D.

top left- clean kitchen, no mean feat with 2 messy kids and 1 even messier big kid. top right- I decided to explore my backyard (never happens) and visited our fallen down fence, the place totally reeked! The source I discovered is this massive tree has been littering the ground with rotting mangoes. bottom left- we've been invaded by nasty biting tiny ants. bottom right- solidified butter imprint from lunchbox crumpets :).

We'd had rain for a week (I don't have a drier) and my boy had decided to decorate his uniform everyday (he only has 2 and he needs them 5days a week); I managed to get through about 10 loads of built up washing!! or 2 washing line fulls. I wandered around the house taking photos :), I pulled out the board games we'd gotten in the last few weeks from Christmas sales and in the process tidied the games cupboard. Tidied the upper floor; its amazing how all the accumulated bits and pieces that get dumped all over the place every day manage to take hours to put away.

top left- new games we've been trying out, Phill and I, I highly recommend all of them although Chaos is a bit, um, evil? top right- games we've been accumulating and playing with the kids, go is a bit hard (for us adults!) so we've been using the board for Pente which is a lot of fun. These are good games too, I'd recommend Labyrinth, Bonanza and ducks in a row for good but thought provoking beginning games. bottom left- half of our games in a semi tidy state. bottom right- my super quick handmade rush hour storage box ;),

Cleaned the kitchen, dining, living rooms, vacuumed, did my daily maths training and brain exercise on the ds then played some sudoku with lunch. Pulled out all my recipe books with the aim of making a meal schedule and wrote down kid lunch box ideas and a shopping list. Picked up the kids and put them to work, I mean, that's what they're for right? ;p Actually it was nice to have company while working and spend time together, and it led me to an awesome idea! Instead of nagging them to clean their rooms I stumbled across a great motivator: if they hadn't cleaned their rooms with a reasonable amount of time (say 10mins) I'd give them another job to do (so, Blythe got to sort my clean washing, and Dev got to dry dishes), they cleaned their rooms in record time :). Next idea is to not give them breakfast until they have uniforms, shoes on and hair brushed lol! (am I harsh? Mwhahahaha).

left- colourful washing with my view backdrop. right- twi'lek Blythe sorting washing.

I decided I needed to take a break from what I was doing - washing down bedframes, tables, drawers, boxes, 'everything' to dust and de-mold our bedrooms - and catch up on general housework. I still have a long way to go, but 1 job at a time eh.. 1 job at a time. See our goal is to dust, de-mold, sand and paint, clear our storage area and get rid of all our junk and then sell the house! And then.. move.. somewhere :). I do like it here, but the house is old and requires more maintenance then our slackness can attain; and we're all allergic to dust and mold which this house seems prone to, and Phill wants to move to a more convenient location to shops and parks.

can you see the mold? left- its growing everywhere, but once we get all the junk off the dirt under the house and wash copper over everything it should be alright. right- the slack previous owners painted over the top of mold and dirt - not bothering to clean first, its just now starting to show through (under all the glossy paint).

So big plans. I'll let you know how I progress :).

Vancouver Island - part 1, the Butchart Gardens

from the japanese section, there was a lot of decorations and arrangements of gardens but the truest stunning beauty came from the living works of art themselves.

We packed our backpacks (kids too) for our 2 day adventure and lugged our suitcases downstairs for storage, booked out of our hotel and were picked up bright and early. We were told be out the front between 8 and 9 and fortunately were the first picked up so didn't have to wait an hour! Teressa was our guide, she was patient, friendly and talked non-stop, whats not to like? ;) We picked up a US couple, a canadian couple and a french lady.

(bus trip photos, on the way to the ferry) top left- cranberry farms. top right- late season pumpkin farms! (never knew how pumpkins grew lol). bottom left- that big black blog on the tower is actually an eagle nest. bottom right- that was half of the glasshouse, they were just huge!

We learnt all about Vancouver who's official stat padding population count is 2.5 million but the actual city has only 750k. We heard all about the sky rail, the olympics, the logs they're floating in and the surrounding farm lands. Immediately West is swampland but due to its locality its covered in industry and farm land. When the 'big one' (the huge earthquake they're expecting any time now) comes the whole area will become a second Atlantis, but they keep building.

top left- on the ferry we passed a handful of little islands, look how close those houses are! top right- Butchart Gardens map (the place was huge). bottom left- sunken garden n us. bottom right- some xmas baubles. The garden had fir and pine leaves decorating all the fences, paths, even the bins had flowery bouquets on top of them :).

We reached tSwassen and had 20mins to look in the small ocean front mall. The kids did the kid thing - toilet, and then beg for food. I got stuck in a silver shop with the intention of buying a makeshift wedding ring, which I succeed in doing. Back to the bus and onto the ferry we park. Teresa recommended the buffet on the ferry so after $60-70 - ouch - I concede it was very nice! The first french toast I've had, mm, with cinnamon. Their salad bar was a make your own type with all the ingredients laid out (what a good idea), so I made a cos lettuce, mixed lettuce, dried cranberries, bacon bits, sunflower seeds, baby tomatoes, and olive salad. And then there was chocolate mouse cake... best I've ever had! We'd been surviving on 2 meals a day, my poor stomach couldn't eat $20 worth!

top- japanese garden and some Levick flowers. bottom left- what do you know, a round thing. bottom right- and the path goes ever on and on..

When we disembarked we went straight to the Butchard Gardens to make the most of the light but we only had 1.5hrs because it was a 1 day tour and that gave everyone else time in Victoria (the capitol of BC Canada and the big town on Vancouver Island); though we were staying overnight. Another hour in the gardens would not have been too long! After all the gift shop itself takes about half an hour ;) lol, I had to make do with 5 anxious minutes. Last time Mum and Dad were here they spent 2hours in the Japanese section alone.

had some fun with paint.net my photo editing program :). top left is the true image, you may notice the trees look a little familiar..?

We powered through, skipping the sunken garden with 1 token photo and did spend most of the time in the Japanese section. It was sooo green and had so many interesting angles and was the most enjoyable photographic experience I had in Canada. I really wasn't expecting the kids to be much entertained but they actually had a great time; I think they felt our excitement and looked around with an open mind :).

There's a lot of photos of the garden but not too much to say about it, it was a visual feast and a great experience.

totem kids replete with fearsome expressions

After the garden we drove through very picturesque countryside with cute interesting little brick, stone and shingle cottages alternating with ramshackle shacks and caravans. We learnt about the native indians, First Nations People, and how they were mistreated and how a native school was built on the island that teaches the full curriculum but is also steeped in their culture. This is the beginning of recovery for a whole country, having their pride and destiny slowly restored.

top left- the three bears, made by frames and living plants. top right- interesting textures. bottom left- and on and on. bottom right- typical japanese garden scene, green green burbling and twisty trees.

We got dropped off at the Fairmont Empress Hotel, Mum had booked us in there for a very special treat :). We tucked Mum into bed again and there being a great many little museums and sites to see, debated long over our choice and ended up going to see the wax museum. Not a god choice, it was a bit spooky and I spent the whole time trying to explain and tell stories about the depicted wax statues. Try to explain who various Parliament members, inventors, generals, royalty, actors and madmen are to a 5 and 7 year old! We then headed uptown to find 1 of the 8 restaurants that had been recommended and found 1 right at the end lol. We did stop into a chocolate store on the way though, very necessary stop ;). ReBar was a funky little restaurant with mature tastes, I betted on sweet potato 'chips' (they were as thick as fingers and long as a hand) with garlic aoli and wholemeal pita with homos for the kids. A miso with tofu, mushrooms and buckwheat noodles for Mum and a pear, walnut, blue cheese, lime dressing, baby spinach salad for myself.

top right is a sharpened black and white detailed glimpse of branches and roof line. There were so many beautiful buildings at the gardens too. The other two pics make great desktops :).

We all got a looovely sleep in luxurious beds with down matress liners, pillows and donas. We were all looking forward to the Bug Zoo tomorrow (= next blog! :)).