Settlers of Catan

When we went to Kentucky last February, our friends Kristin and Greg taught us this new game, "Settlers of Catan." It may be the best game ever and we quickly purchased it ourselves and started having Settlers parties. The downside to the game is that it is only for 6 players and with our group of friends, there are about 15 people for any given activity. We felt kind of snooty inviting people in groups of 4. One of our other friends decided to buy the game, so we expanded and had 12 people playing at the same time.

In case you are interested, the game is like a combination of Risk and Monopoly except better because all players can be engaged in some aspect of play on every turn. I won't try and explain more than that because it is a little complicated to explain initially, but if you are a gamer, you should consider this as your next game purchase.

A few of her favorite things...

I was ironing a few weeks ago and I put Megan's gate up so that she couldn't accidently pull the iron over or do something equally horrible. I checked on her every few minutes and on one of my trips in, the below scene is what I found. She had crawled into her chair by herself (didn't know she could do that) and apparently thought ahead to bring some reading material with her. Either that or she got up the first time and realized she had nothing to do, so she got down, put a few books on the chair and got back up...When she saw me come in, she used all the momentum she could muster to rock the chair wildly. This is just one part of a current chair trend. She likes to sit in chairs of all kinds and tends to sit in said chairs with a grin that seems to say, "I'm big stuff, I can sit in this chair." I'm not sure I completely understand the fascination, but I enjoy the resulting stillness that sitting in a chair tends to bring.



Megan is not into raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, but here are a few of her favorite words:

Ball (definition is currently being expanded to include circles)
Bubble (which not only means bubbles, but liquid of any kind)
Book
Baby (any person)
Daddy (says the name of whatever parent is not around at the time)
Mommy
Wee (translation swing)
Duck
Dog (which sounds a lot like duck, but I'm going to count it)
Cracker (sounds like cu-cu, but is discernible as cracker)
Milk
Beep (made when she sees anything with buttons)
Hi (but only when she is holding a phone)
Na-na (banana, which ironically she will say but rarely eat)
Uh-Oh (when she is preparing to drop something)
No-no-no (always in multiples and always after I tell her no)

Hocking Hills

In the middle of July, the Warner family all got together for a long (but not long enough) weekend in the Hocking Hills region of Ohio. A gold star goes to anyone who actually knows where that is...It is a region southeast of Columbus. It's a beautiful area with tons of hills, sandstone cliffs, caverns and forests.

Here is part of the family exploring "Old Man's Cave," so named for a recluse who chose to live in the cavernous area during the 1870s.



Megan, despite the fact that she loves to walk, run, crawl, hop, roll, etc., was quite happy to be in the pack unless I stopped moving.



She loves all forms of water and will walk right in regardless of shoes, socks or possible dangers. After the picture below was taken she threw a major fit because we wouldn't let her in the water.


The next day we got smart and brought her sandals which were much easier to remove and thus she was allowed to play more. The below picture was at the end of a fairly strenuous 3 mile hike. I let her get completely wet because the diaper and outfit were coming off soon anyway,






Here Megan and Jonathan were having a pillow fight.



Mom and Dad very graciously paid for the cabin as dad's "retirement present" to the family. Somehow I'm not sure it is supposed to work that way, but it was a very nice cabin and it had a hot tub.



On Sunday, we spent the morning at Lake Logan, where Megan again ended up in the water. We also went to the pool on Friday, but I didn't get pictures. She has absolutely no fear of water (other than she doesn't like having water run over her head) which is fun on one hand, but a little scary on the other.

Water video

Just a short clip of Megan playing in Lake Logan.

Pianists!

So I think Lily, Caden and Megan are all destined to be piano prodigies...They are all so keenly interested in the piano when they come over. This particular evening (July 3), all the "daddies" (Chad, Matt and Phil) went to the driving range while all the "mommies" (Me, Kim and Tracy) kept the kids occupied. The guys were originally going to play golf using their father's day gift certificates, but it was rainy. Instead, everyone came over for dinner and they hit balls at a driving range that has rusted out cars for targets. Yep, that's all I'm saying...

Shoes

So, Megan has pretty much mastered walking. She still falls a lot, but that's because she's going for speed. She is also a crazy daredevil and loves to climb. Everyday it seems that she can stretch a little further and climb up on something else that yesterday I considered, "safe." She cries when we come in from being outside and loves to play in the dirt, sand and rocks. Two of her most recent words are "ball" and "bubbles." All of this is to preface that in all her un-girliness, she loves shoes. The other day, I was going through some of her old clothes and found a pair of shoes that were too big last summer. I put them on her feet to see if they fit now, and even though her little heels were hanging over the edge of the sandals, she toddled around the room in them, falling regularly because of the illfit. When I took them off, she started to cry, so I grabbed her white Mary Janes and she wore them for the next hour. What made this funnier, was that it was a hot night, so she was only wearing her diaper and her prissy shoes.

Since that night, whenever she finds them, (usually where they last came off) she carries them to me to put it on her. They are a little big, so often after about 5 minutes, she has lost one of them. This doesn't slow her down too much and usually the other ends up some place weird like, the bath tub, her toy box or an empty wipe container...


She is "dancing" in the above photo. Now that she can stand uninhibited, she has added quite a few moves to her dance repertoire including some side to side action, knee bends and the occasional foot stomp. I will have to catch some video of this. Yeah, she'll pretty much stop to "break it down" just about anywhere.

Back on the wagon...

Sorry to all of my 5 loyal blog readers, I have fallen off the blog wagon. Today, I will attempt to climb back on...

So last month, Megan and I went to Indiana and spent a few days in La Porte with Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Suzy, Jonathan and Ariana. We visited a few of my favorite haunts. The first day we went to Lake Michigan and Carlson's, the best root beer stand ever. Suzy and I also went to Shipshewana one day and I saw a few friends from high school and college although I didn't get to see as many as I wanted (Alisha, if you read this, send my your number via facebook...)

Megan loved the sand, but was not so into the frigid water.




I love this face.


Baby J got a little of Grandma's rootbeer float.