New board games

Last week, the two new board games we ordered from Days of Wonder arrived. The first was Ticket to Ride: Märklin. This is similar to the U.S. Ticket to Ride game, except on a map of Germany. (Märklin is a German toy company best known for their model trains.) The game does add a couple new twists. It gets rid of the longest train bonus, replacing it with a most completed destination tickets bonus. It also adds passengers that you can move along your routes, picking up points for every city they visit on the way. It's a fun variant of Ticket to Ride, and Tianna and I both enjoyed it. We tied at 169 points. (We both lost, though, to our friend Bryan, who pulled more than 200 points.)

The second game is Small World. Small World is somewhat like Risk + fantasy - dice, and a whole lot shorter. Each player controls one of 14 races combined with one of 20 special powers. These combinations are changed every time you play, so the game is unique. Then players take turn conquering regions on the map and gaining points for each region they own. However, each player only has 10 or so armies, and generally won't get any more. (The Skeleton race is an exception; as they conquer other regions, they get more armies.) Thus, you eventually get to the point where your race is stalled; spread too thin to be able to grow much. At that point, you can put your race into decline and pick a new race and special power, and start it in a new area on the board. You get points from the regions owned by either race, but the race in decline can no longer attack. The game continues for 10 rounds (at least, it's 10 with two players), and whoever has the most points wins. Games usually take less than an hour.

Anyway, it's a fun game. We played this just after our TTR: Märklin game and tied again, at 106 points each. Tianna won via the tiebreaker rules (whoever has the most armies on the board wins a tiebreaker). But really, how often do you have two tied games in a row? We must be meant for each other.

So anyway, if anyone in the area likes board games, we've got a couple fun ones for you to try out. Oh, and by the way, both of those pictures are links to the game's website, in case you want more info.

Christmas Card

I've never done Christmas cards before. But this year BJ and I thought it might be fun to send some out. And I even designed a way cute card in iPhoto. And their prices really aren't all that bad. But then we figured out how many cards we'd need and figured out exactly how much it would cost… and decided that we may have to wait and do Christmas cards another year. But at least we thought about it, which is progress! So instead, I'm putting the picture on here and you can all pretend that you received this in the mail, personally addressed to you with some non-personal message on the back in a font made from my messy handwriting. And we'll have more money to spend on Kessa for Christmas! Hooray!

Bedtime

All of this growing, eating, teething, laughing, and singing is bound to tucker out a wee babe. G'night, sweetheart.

The Cow Duck

First, who ever thought up this idea? "Rubber duckies are too cliche. Let's make it look like a cow!" We've often said that it is simply a duck that dressed up like a cow for Halloween. Apparently her costume got stuck on?

Despite the silliness of the idea, this is one of Kessa's favorite toys. She will be crying and fussy and I'll pull out the cow duck and she will instantly start grinning. "MoooooQuack!" will often bring a giggle. The Cow Duck stays in our diaper bag because it's a quick and easy distraction. We love the Cow Duck.

It also has a nifty feature where you can put it in the bathtub, and if the water is too hot, the word "HOT" appears on the bottom of the duck.

Singing

We've already documented how much Kessa loves to sit on Daddy's lap while he plays the piano. Turns out, she also loves to sing along. Daddy played the piano in Sacrament meeting on Sunday, so he was practicing with Kessa. She obviously already knows her hymns. Listen to her sing along!

Laughing

Kessa has also started laughing a lot more. She's kind of a pill about it, though. She'll laugh and laugh until the second I bring out the camera. Even if it's sitting right next to me and without even looking at it I turn it on and hope I have it pointed in the right direction. Even if she doesn't see it. She knows. And she'll stop laughing. Which results in videos like this:

Or even more often, like this:

I finally got a couple of little giggles recorded. So until she gets a little less camera shy, you're all gonna have to live with this one:

First tooth!

Kessa ate cereal one day. The next day (Nov. 15th), her first tooth finally broke through! (Not finally as in, We never thought she'd ever teeth, but as in, This tooth has been working its way out for quite some time.) It's the bottom right (your right, Kessa's left).

Sorry, no picture. It's hard enough getting her to open her mouth just right so we can see it, let alone trying to get a picture of it. But we'll try. Cross your fingers for us.