Super Stars Warses

SuperbOwl weekend has, in the past 5 years or so, become a different sort of tradition for us. We generally travel to Carlsbad on Saturday to celebrate Julie and Ross's birthdays, then travel back home for Super Star Wars Sunday, wherein we eat junk food and watch a Star War. This weekend was no exception. Celebrated and played games (Dungeon Mayhem, Chess, and Swords & Strongholds) with Ross and Jalie on Saturday; ate nachos and watched The Last Jedi on Sunday. Pretty great weekend, sinus trubs notwithstanding. Oh, and Ross is turning 18, which is kind of crazy. He was born right when Carrie and I got together. He's heading to NMSU in the fall. Will be good to have him close and get to do some gaming with him on more regular basis.

Gritty Fatigue

I've been working through the First Law trilogy for a while now and I'm finally on the last book, The Last Argument of Kings. I find myself tiring of gritty fantasy. I took a break and shifted to comics to read some of Tom King's Batman and Gotham Central. Not really a break from the gritty, but still good stuff. Gotham Central has me wanting to rewatch The Wire again. I also picked up Lumberjanes and I (and the twins both) loved it (see below Owen making a goofy forced smile, caught reading through it the second time). It was a taste of the break I was looking for. I've been meaning to reread The Black Company and The Scar but I think I need to find something a bit less grim as a palette cleanser. Maybe A Closed and Common Orbit. I was reminded recently how much I liked The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and one of the things I enjoyed about it was its overall optimism.

Friday Night!

Sussing out Mothership whilst piled with movie-watching kids.

Dad'ing in Silence

Last night my son and I laid around in bed for an hour or so quietly reading comics (him: Calvin & Hobbes; me: Batman) and it was one of my best moments of being a parent.

Rare southern NM snow.

Took the girls for a walk to my mom's house.

Eye-roll

Me: You think there's a dungeon back here?
Paige: Whatever, dad.

Van-aerobics

Carrie asked Paige to help her carry in the groceries, came back to find this. She also spends most of her time while watching tv doing similar feats and frankly it's starting to make me feel bad about my lack of physical activity.

Fireman birfday

Came home from work and was met with slippers, a beer, a crackling fire, and Empire Strikes back on the TV for my birthday.

…that was the plan anyway. We got there after the smoke-filled house was aired out and the fire department had stopped by. My mom got excited and forgot to open the the flue. :)

Best Market

Saturday farmer's market includes beer and ice cream and comic books!

B-hole Kid

The other day I overheard my 8-year-old daughter trying to coach her brother into this call-and-response.

"Ok, you say, 'whatcha doin?' then I'll say, 'chewin chocolate'..."

According to the internet there are Butthole Surfers lyrics in Diary of a Wimpy Kid? Maybe?

Drones

The twins were given a pair of drones for their birthday. 2 min till one of them flew over the wall into the desert. 5 min till one of them was broken. Gifting kids toys with batteries and/or remote controls is just giving their parents another job.

Wakanda forever!

Punkin Patch

We were at the Mesilla Valley Maze for almost four hours yesterday. Luckily the weather was great and the kids barely had any melt downs. See last photo, where Owen got hangry and threw a fit over not getting to take home a pumpkin that I couldn't even pick up.

Carrie's 40th

Lake George was awesome. We went up for Carrie's 40th, a boatload of family and a few friends in tow. The stress of planning around 20 people and a couple of intense physical activities had me feeling like I was earning at least half of the beers I drank.

Busted!

He snuck away from Star Wars Battlefront during load screens to catch some LEGO DC Super Hero Girls: Super-Villain High.

Tunnels & Tonsils

We cooked a birthday dinner for Bomb Rain and after dinner Owen braved his tonsillectomy recovery to run his homebrew D&D game. He modified it to include food boxes (the thing in the box on the character sheet is a chicken leg) that we erased as we spent time in the dungeon. We fought a wood guardian and two wood warriors (smaller than wood guardians). Grimble Mossneck the halfling distracted the woodmen while Razer the thief and Sasha the warrior snuck around behind them. Sasha failed her attack and the wood guardian used it's rose guns to tattoo a smiley face and "I love crazy people" on her butt. Razer attacked with his knife and whittled all of the wood warriors' legs off and most of the wood guardian's. Grimble head-butted the wood guardian in the butt, knocking it down then shot snakes all over it with his snake scopes. Then Razer carved "I'm a vegetarian" in its butt as revenge for Sasha. The pcs retrieved a snake amulet that lets Grimble shoot multiple snakes at a time from his snake scopes. Then Grimble fixed some pirahnas for dinner so they could get their food box back and they returned to town. P great dungeoneering.