Gerry's school is celebrating its 194th birthday this year. As part of the celebrations, the school arranged a school outing in Disneyland. Naturally, we took the opportunity to also take advantage of our annual pass and took Gordon along as well.
Arriving in Disneyland with Gordon
All aboard!
Gordon getting ready to go into the 3D philarmagic show (which he enjoyed)
The school that Gordon goes to had an open day recently.
In one sense, its feels kinda odd. I always pictured open day's as primarily an opportunity for parents to check out the school and consider whether they want to send their kids there.
Granted, that may be the intention behind the schools open day as well. However, the fact that there are lots of different games and activities means that its actually a good day out for kids who already go.
:)
Godzilla in da house!
Heading for the slide - his second favourite playground activity
From these, pictures, you might legitimately wonder at the age level for which the playground is designed
Art class - I think that is meant to be a picture of himself. I think.
So things have been quiet around here again as I haven't posted in 2 weeks. If you have been wondering what I've been up to, the photo's below should give you an idea.
Admittedly, not great quality but considering it's my first mini, I'm relatively happy.
The kids club at the Phuket hotel we went to actually has a very small separated area for older kids. This small area has its own TV, game consoles as well as a pool table so that the older kids can hang out separately from the younger kids.
Luckily, there weren't that many people when we were there so we managed to get a bit of time to shoot some pool.
Gerry lining up his shot
We couldn't just turn them loose on the pool table (obviously) so I had to supervise them very closely while they were playing. In practice, this meant that I had to take the shot with a little bit of shot assist.
Gordon gets in on the action as well
Luckily, we didn't break the gauze!
As you can imagine, we didn't exactly set the table alight. Still, we did have a good laugh and the kids were ecstatic whenever we did pot the odd ball.
Now that I have finally managed to clear out the pictures from our trip to Macau, its time to post some more holiday snaps - but this time, from our trip to Phuket. In July...
Hey, give me a break! Its not easy finding time to post every week!!
As with our previous trips to Phuket, we went to a resort hotel and spent all of our time there. Luckily, the hotel had a pretty decent kids club which the kids could spend hours at every day.
Believe it or not, he was playing Phantom of the Opera!
Giddy up, hoss!
We didn't spend all our time there just watching the kids though. The kids club had a set of giant dominoes so I took the opportunity to play a quick tabletop (or in this case, floortop!) game with Gerry.
I need to ditch these high value tiles asap!
I win! Huzzah!
The kids club there also puts on various activities - including a towel folding tutorial which you may remember from my previous trips to Phuket. Gordon even managed to get in on the action with a little help from his mummy.
That elephant has either drunk too much water or needs to start breathing!
All in all, I have to say that I really liked the hotel kids club. There were a ton of activities for the kids which kept them busy during the day. It should go without saying that this meant they were knackered by nightime.
:)
One of the great things about having boys is that, as they get older, you get a chance to relive your (misspent) youth as you introduce them to the geek way of life. By way of example, let me show you the latest game that we have been playing.
Castle Panic
Castle Panic is a co-operative board game by Fireside Games. The easiest way to describe it is to liken the game to a board game version of the tower defence games that seem to be so popular online these days. in essence, you are the master of a castle under siege by the orc and goblin hordes. If your tower still stands at the end of the game - you win. Otherwise, you become fodder for the bellies of the neighbouring horde.
Getting ready to defend against the goblin horde
Part of the reason that I got this game in the first place is that its a co-operative game. Currently, Gerry isn't really mature enough to handle losing so playing most normal board games with him just tends to result in an appearance of the Incredible Sulk.
Our princess - safely ensconced deep within our castle
The game is fairly simple and easy to learn. The developer recommends an age of 10+ but it is actually playable by children of 6+ if you play with the easy variant and help them out a little with tactics. The base game itself doesn't give you a whole lot of tactical depth but I hear that the Wizards Tower expansion corrects this. Of course, when you are playing with kids, a simple game is actually a good thing.
Gordon rolling to see where the next monster shows up
The game is also quite well designed in that it brings out moments where you have the entire group all rooting for the same thing to happen. In particular, one of the monster tokens is a boulder which flattens everything in its path on the way to taking out one of your castle walls. When you have a ton of monsters in an arc and draw a boulder, the entire group starts to chant for the die to come up in the right number and conveniently help you take out a bunch of monsters.
My kingdom for a boulder!
Overall, Gerry and Gordon really enjoyed this game. Its fun, easy to learn and really gets them pumped up every time they take out one of the invading monsters.
The dance of (minor) victory
More info
If you are looking for more info on the game, the developers website is found here. You can also find more information about the game from Boardgamegeek here.
The Tabletop episode showing Castle Panic is also a good watch if you want to get a feel for how the game plays.
The Qube is the name for the kids play area located inside the Venetian hotel. Seeing as the weather wasn't particularly great when we were in Macau, we spent a fair amount of time inside the Qube watching the kids play.
There are several different games but by far the favourite are represented in the below photos.
The Slide
The favourite was this huge slide that had several "waves" on the way down to the bottom. The slide itself was pretty big as the kids had to climb up two sets of stairs in order to get to the top of the slide.
Gerry and Gordon getting ready to race down the slide
Gerry - the clear winner
The Wii
The other favourite was the Wii. This was really popular although playtime was limited as there were lots of kids which meant they could only play for 20 minutes at a time.
Playing a racing game with the racing wheel
Gordon trying to turn a sharp corner
Other than racing, they also managed to play a sword-fighting game - with Gerry taking great pains to remind everyone at every opportunity that he won
Way back in April, we went for a long weekend break to Macau. More specifically, to the Venetian resort in Macau.
You have probably heard of it before considering that it launched with a pretty big splash in the newspapers. Basically, its a huge indoor resort built around a Venice theme (with canals, gondola's and singing gondoliers). If you have never been there, its hard to accurately describe how impressive the place actually is. Luckily, the power of Google's image search means that I don't have to.
:)
What you might not know, unless you have been there yourself, is that the place also has a putting green.
Hole in one ... but only as Gordon cheated by picking up the ball and placing it next to the hole.
The green even had a water hazard!
Enjoying a leisurely stroll around the grounds
Gordon - getting a bit of help with his technique
Getting ready to tee off
Gerry had a great time smacking the golf ball around. Unfortunately, Gordon didn't really "get" the game but he still had a lot of fun running around with his putter.
:)
Blogs - the final frontier. These are the thoughts of the blogger Jokemeister. His continuing mission to explore strange new blog topics, to seek out new jokes and new ways of thinking. To boldly go where no nerd has gone before.
Posts
