Game On

PENGUINS AT PLAY: One of the first things the kids did today was connect with their preschool friend who recently moved to San Diego. The three used to play together nicely and pretty regularly at area parks, but because of the distance that now separates them, today's play date was in the virtual kind: They all met up in Club Penguin.

In order to connect, they had to be online and using the same server at the same time. They connected in Sasquatch. There, they had a couple of snowball fights and hid behind snow forts, checked out an underwater cave, hung out in a pizzeria, swam in an indoor pool, played soccer in a stadium, danced at a disco, checked out a pet store and more.

The kids were careful to make sure not to lose their buddy "Pingazane." (I overheard Annabelle say something to CJ about "penguin sitting," which I thought was pretty funny.)

Pingazane caught on quickly. Annabelle and CJ are definitely looking forward to more penguin pow-wows with him.

CONTEMPLATING 'COMPLETE': At one point this morning, CJ walked out of his bedroom and announced he had just completed his "new" Mickey Mania game.

I was a bit taken aback and questioned, "Really, you beat it?"

He immediately confessed that he was able to "beat" it thanks to a cheat code gleaned from YouTube which let him select any level he wanted to play and he chose to go to the final boss, whom he beat.

I told him that I wouldn't consider that approach "completing" the game, because the meaning of the word complete is "all parts," and he most definitely did not play all parts of the game. So we went back and forth for awhile about beating/completing.

I asked him if he was done with the game now (we'd had it all of 24 hours. It came to us via eBay for just $1.99 plus $4 shipping). He said he wasn't, which was good to hear. I encouraged him to consider trying to truly complete the game - something he's done with other games for which he didn't have a cheat code.

Quick aside - CJ became absolutely obsessed with "Mickey Mania" when he stumbled across it in a YouTube video. For whatever reason, he LOVES the music that accompanies the game. Today he left the game on the title screen for the longest time. He said, "Now I can listen to it for as long as I want" instead of being limited to the duration of the YouTube video. When I ask CJ why he likes the music so much, he says, "Because it's orchestral."

TIGHTS AND TILTS: Early afternoon we simply HAD to go to the U District to get Miss Bee some new tights and a new leotard. Her old (and original ones, might I add) were looking HORRIBLE. I was embarrassed taking her to class last week. She looked more like she was reporting for construction work than ballet dancing. ;)

On the way there, we stopped at Archie McPhee, always a hit with the kids and me. I thought it would be a good place to buy some pinata stuffing. I was right. :)

Just two blocks before we reached Centerstage, the dance clothing supply place, CJ spotted a Full Tilt. It was one we tried to go to on our tour of arcades on his birthday in April, but it was closed then. Today, it was open!

The place is TINY. We were hoping for/expecting it to be like the other two Full Tilt locations we've been to (West Seattle and Columbia City), with a dozen games or so, plus awesome ice cream. Well, this closet-sized space had just one machine. It was Tempest, the game which was actually my favorite game when I was in high school. CJ played it once. He wasn't impressed.

He was, however, impressed with his birthday cake flavored ice cream. Annabelle had strawberry chocolate chip. If I'd have ordered one, I would have opted for their green tea flavor. Mmmm.

YOGA NOGA: You know it's hot out when the golf course our house overlooks is practically devoid of players, as was the case today. We were going to go to yoga later this afternoon, but it was so blazing hot as we were running our errands late morning/midday, that I pulled the plug on that idea.

My tired old car has no air conditioning, and going to yoga means at least 1.5 hours in the car. The trip home can take 60 minutes or more, during rush hour, heading toward the sun, and it's often stop and go (or stop and stop) traffic, so no breeze to relieve the heat. Plus, today President Obama is in town and lord knows what kind of monkey wrench his motorcade might throw into rush hour.

That said, we can't just sit around all week, waiting for it to cool off. So, we turned to our good ol' Internet and our 'friends' at Sparkpeople for a little cardio workout, and then to the folks at Fifth Avenue Pilates for some core work.

SO THAT EXPLAINS IT: I heard two crashes mid afternoon, and I thought something fell around the house, but found nothing. I blamed it on the railyard running a few blocks to our east. However, it turns out two fighter jets were scrambled from Portland to respond to a violation of flight restrictions put in place during President Obama's visit to Seattle. Those were sonic booms we heard!

DEAR DIARY: I figured we needed to do something a little more school-y today than just P.E. and play video games. So, I busted out a couple of Scholastic DVDs. The first was "Diary of a Worm," a cute book about a worm's trials and tribulations as he goes through his days (which include going to school). The second was its sequel, "Diary of a Spider."

I found some classroom activity suggestions on Scholastic's Web site, including an activity sheet checking for comprehension by asking the kids to put occurrences in the proper sequence on the front of the PDF, and on the back they were to draw a picture of one way the worm helps the earth.

There was also a suggestion to have kids write a diary of the animal of their choosing. I think that would be fun for the kids. I think I'll have them do that for the next few days - just a couple of sentences each day from the animal of their choosing's perspective.

We also read along with the newest "Diary of a Fly" on the Tumblebooks Web site (via the Seattle Public Libraries' portal). On the Tumblebooks' site, we were also able to play games related to the "Diary ..." books (one game was to increase typing speed, another to promote verb awareness). Neat-o!