Game On!

JUST DANCE: We started our day out with a rousing hour of "Just Dance" fun. We are now the proud owners of "Just Dance 2" and "Just Dance 3" for Wii.

While it's not Cross Fit or anything near that, it's a good, fun workout. In fact, though we spent an hour going after it this a.m., just after noon Annabelle asked for another round. Excellent!

I challenged the kids to try to improve their scores by being more precise with their movements. I explained to them that with dance routines, it's kind of like doing math with your body. Rhythm has to do with counting and the routine often has patterns that are repeated. Once I got them on board with that, they started to do better, Wii scoreboard wise.
ISLAND TIME: We did some math today (adding and subtracting meters and centimeters into the hundreds), as well as some geography. Today we were studying the "Midwest" states which, oddly enough, include places like Wisconsin and Ohio and Indiana. How, by any stretch of the imagination, do those count as WEST states?

I told the kids, all I could figure is back in the old ole days, of the original 13 colonies and such, places west of, say West Virginia, were really pretty "westerny" and over time as the west became wester (?!) the east west became the Midwest.

That's some good learnin' there, right?!

SIGNED, SEALED: CJ got his post birthday thank you cards in the mail today. Addressing the envelopes took almost as long as making the cards, as he's a perfectionist when it comes to penmanship.

CLASSICS: An email from the Library of Congress reminded me that a selection of digitized classic books is available online for use by parents at home as well as by educators in classrooms and libraries.

Since CJ has a 'thing' about the age of, well, things - and the publication dates of books, in particular. Given that, I thought he, especially, might like checking out this resource. http://www.read.gov/books/ There are some pretty remarkable works worth checking out.

TAKE ONE FOR THE TEAM: Early afternoon we drove down to Sodo and stopped by the Mariners team store. I am putting together a Mariners themed basket for a charity auction to benefit a friend's severely disabled grandson.

Honestly, based on the prices on even clearance stuff at the Mariners' store, you'd think they'd just won the last 10 World Series. Yikes. No wonder it was just us and a dozen or so Japanese tourists in the place. :/

We did buy a sizable gift card for game tickets. It will go nicely with the great bobbleheads (Ichiro, Dave Niehaus and the 116 game season) we have collected, a plush Mariners' moose, a kids' hardback book about King Felix, some other game-day only collectibles, an autographed Alvin "Mr. Mariners" Davis card, some Mariners brand peanuts and Cracker Jacks, a baseball encyclopedia, some Safeco Field soil and more. I would bid on the basket for sure. :)

PUT TO THE TEST: This afternoon, Annabelle and I had a two-hour parent-child Microsoft Playtest on the Microsoft campus. We signed all sorts of stuff saying we wouldn't say a thing about what we saw or did, and so I can't offer any more details except this - our view as we crossed the 520 Bridge back to Seattle from Bellevue.

Not only is Playtesting interesting, you get great swag. Annabelle came home with an XBox game which she LOVES and I got an Amazon gift card. Nice!