July 17, 2012

Outside Temp: 67 F (it was a little warm and muggy today, and teasing us ALL DAY about thunderstorms, with thunder and lightening, and NO rain!  Lame.)

What I cooked today:
Burgers: I had a migraine, so I had no desire to make dinner.  I went with easy and simple, and there were no complaints.  Even Connor asked for seconds, which I guess means I need to start getting ground beef in 2 lb packages, since 1 1/2 isn't big enough.  Ugh, Why do boys eat so much?

Update:
So, sometime around 5:45am, I woke up to find my entire family STILL UP from last night.  That's it, I've drawn the line.  After a fair amount of cursing, they all went off to bed by 6am, and I decided that enough was enough.

School starts back up in about 5 weeks, so I'm implementing 'bedtime' on the family now.  They were all in bed, lights out, by midnight tonight.  Now, for most people, that may seem insane, but after them staying up until 2-3am, it's a reasonable place to start.  By next week, I'll drop it back to 11pm.  Then to 10pm, and, with about 2 weeks left, they will be back on a 9pm bedtime.  We will not have any problems with them getting to sleep at 9am (when the sun is still out), gosh darnnit. 

So, by the time the kids started moving this morning (around noon), the boys had an interesting discussion.

They are both playing a game called Minecraft, that is kind of like Lego's on a computer.  You can build buildings, mine for resources, and run away or kill creatures or animals in the game.  Of course, the graphics are amazingly simple (they remind me of 1980's games like Adventure or Pong), but the kids love it.  They are learning design, architecture, and some programming.

So, today, both Allen and Connor have been building structures, and they were arguing between them as to which structure was 'better'.  Now, we all know that 'better' is a subjective term, that depends on the perspective of the person making the determination.  So, they decided to go with an 'impartial' judge, in the way of their sister.

First, the boys both picked their favorite structure.  Then, they would describe it to Katie and she would determine which structure was 'better'.

Connor went first.  He had built a 'hospital', complete with patient rooms (which were adorned with beds, bedside tables, sinks, etc), reception areas, and examination rooms.  He worked hard on the design of the building, including placement of windows, doors, and even dormers for the roof.  I think he even went to far as having signs available to direct patients to the correct location of things.  His eye for detail was amazing.

Then Allen showed his building.  He had built a Norse keep, with a large main room, complete with fireplace and trestle tables.  He had spent a large amount of time working on the outside of the keep, with a moat, gardens, bridges, and other castle paraphernalia.  As such, there was a complaint of our resident judge that his interior was quite sparse.  He countered that comment by claiming that all Norse keeps were sparse, so that was quite expected.

In the end, I think that Katie got bored and went off to watch a movie.  But, it was fun to watch while it was occurring.  Of course, Patrick and I were both listening to the comments between the three kids, and trying not to crack up at their interactions.  Our kids are awesome.