Level 12

"Have you reached twelve yet?" is a recurring question when visiting Pop and Nana.  My father-in-law, my spouse and I have been WELDing off and on over the past few weeks (more here), hoping to defeat the broken tile mess that is level twelve. 

Well, Pop, I finally did it.  After "extracting" five hundred and thirty five words I reached and beat level twelve last night.  A little happy dance accompanied the cascade finale, I'm not ashamed to say.

Finally, a word game victory.  My spouse always trounces me at Scrabble, so allow me to gloat a little, at least until the Scrabble board comes out, which will probably be tonight. 

Update:  3 new levels, apocalypse swap and shake to undo (and more in an app update just today).  Oh boy, here we go again!

Bean Sprout

Overheard this afternoon at the dinner table:

"Holy cow! My stink is running off the table!"

"I'll trade you a stink for a chili."

Today we taught our oldest Sprout a new (to her) card game called Bohnanza.  The object of the game is to plant and harvest large amounts of beans to sell for gold.  The beans have names like red (an adorable little bean who is blushing because he is in his birthday suit), chili, blue, black-eyed, garden, green, cocoa, coffee, soy, wax and, of course, stink.  The weather hasn't been so great this spring for outdoor play (wet and cool), so FK was looking morosely over the back of the couch, body language strongly suggesting she was bored and a little bit lonely.  Realizing that in all the busy-ness of year end teaching stuff I have been neglecting my children a bit, I asked if she wanted to play a game.  Her face lit up with a big grin and she gave an enthusiastic nod.  After convincing my spouse to play too, the game commenced in a timely fashion and we spent an enjoyable hour planting, harvesting, trading and sometimes donating beans for gold coin.  Of course, anyone listening in would have wondered what was cookin' in the kitchen.