I got a bit delayed in setting up the menu for this coming Sunday, but tonight I forced myself to sit down and plan out what we are going to eat. I found a website that gave not only great recipes, but it also gave lots of history on how the food came about and why. We have had a very busy week and month so I tried to pick easier food but still stayed true to the state of California.

Breakfast:

mixed Fruit and Raisins

The big meal:

Monte Cristo Sandwich

Avocado spread

Sourdough

Cobb Salad

California roll

I should also add that P’s big thing right now is that she loves sushi, and of course California rolls are her favorite. So I thought she would really love to get to make one herself.

One of the things that we like to do as a family is play games. This can be a bit difficult when P wants to play a game and p wants to run across the room repeatedly yelling about how fast she is. It’s also somewhat difficult to decide which card to play or which move to make when being climbed on.

Enter: a family friendly event that’s fun for almost all ages.

I won’t go into the history of the event that you can read for yourself at https://barkingmad.org/.

The way that we have approached this event has been different for the last few years, depending on the needs of the small ones. Last year, we arranged child care and went as “adults”. This year, we decided to take everyone because of P’s interest in a few new games. She has surprised me with skills and strategy in a few of the games that we play with her.

Although the “convention” starts on the Friday before Labor Day, and ends on Monday afternoon, we decided to opt for the short version – arrive on Saturday and leave on Sunday. We have been attending these events for longer than I care to admit publicly, so we know many of the attendees and staff; and those that we don’t know are usually familiar faces.

For a laid-back event, there are many things to do. The group takes over three or four of the large meeting rooms in the hotel, and sets up open tables. We took a few of our games with us, mostly the games for the small ones. If there’s a game you’d like to play, sit down at a table and start setting up the cards or pieces. Odds are, someone walking through will either express interest in learning the game (or playing an old favorite), or negotiate with you to play something they’d like. “So you want to play Battle Cattle? How about you play a quick round of Grave Robbers from Outer Space with us first, then we’ll all play Battle Cattle?”

There are organized events that are scheduled; the annual charity poker tournament, the kid’s roleplaying adventure, and more (that you can find from the same link above). I tend to just join in when I see a game I like being played, or try to convince people to play something I haven’t been able to in a while. Many times, a game will end and continue into a long conversation about anything between old and new friends.

One of the bigger scheduled events is the LARP (Live Action Role Playing). While this phrase may make one think of the stereotypical pictures of nerds in wizard gear in a field, that’s not quite accurate for this.

This year’s LARP was written and produced (yes – it’s a *ton* of work) by a dedicated group. I was able to join the crew of The Starship Edsel while Amber played with and watched the girls. My character was Dr. Mallard Decoy, and I tried to figure out what was going on in the various plots in the game while meeting my own goals by having conversations with the other players. The end result is that everyone had a good time, I got dressed down by the ship’s Executive Officer before being stunned by a “Klingon” and finished the game unconscious on the Bridge.

There were more kids in attendance than I remember seeing in past years. I am pretty sure that ours were the youngest, but that did not stop us from having a few good games of “Skip-Bo Jr.” and “The Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus Game”

P got to join in a game of Telestrations and Tsuro with a group of older kids while p ran between us and ate snacks from the “convention suite” – a room where multiple fresh breads, snacks, and movies are available during the open hours of the event.

I could mention the Chaos Machine that has inspired P to try to build one out of stuff we have at the house, rather than to buy the Chaos Toy kit. I could mention the restaurants nearby (I liked Firehouse Subs). Or, I can suggest to anyone that finds this interesting to attend the event. There’s your sales pitch. I get nothing for it, except maybe some new people to play with or against.

I found out about The Turkey Hill Experience surfing the web trying to find fun things for our stay vacation. I thought it would be a factory tour type of thing. I was pleasantly wrong. There are some cams set up in the factory you can watch live but the real factory is 6 miles away. Good! This way no one can sneeze in the ice cream.

I really enjoyed this place. The staff was very friendly and really seem to enjoy what they were doing and interacting with the kids. We did the Experience plus the taste lab. Which cost$46.05 for 2 adults, one Junior, and one under 4. Not bad if you ask me, lunch can be more then that for the 4 of us depending on the restaurant. The taste lab is very cool everyone gets a pint of plain ice cream then you add one of the 15 flavors, some mix ins, and lastly a swirl of some kind. They encourage you to keep trying it to make sure it is right, of course. Then they put it in the deep freezer for 10 minutes, and to entertain you while you wait they give you a presentation on how all of this is done in the factory, which I found very interesting and the kids sat though very well. At the end of 10 minutes they give you the now hard ice cream and a spoon and send you on your way.

As you can see, the kids loved it and so did Chuck and I.

The experience starts out with 2 fake cows you can milk. Don’t worry, it is just water.

There is also a truck the kids can climb on and pretend how to drive. Next up are the 2 tasting areas; one for ice cream and one for tea, lemonade and coffee. I did not know they made iced coffee and wow was it good. After this there is a very short film, and then you start the process of designing your own virtual ice cream, container, and then commercial . The girls were both very cute, but Chuck’s ice cream commercial was the best. If you listen you can hear me creaking up in the background. They also have a bunch of different things that teach about making ice cream but are really fun for the kids; a ball pit, a few computer games, and even a few matching challenges.

There are a few things to note. Go early, it got very busy around when we left. This is geared to kids, keep that in mind. That pint of ice cream is not going home with you. They will give you a lid but it will melt before you leave. This place is out in the boondocks.

All of this said the kids and us enjoyed this much more than I thought we would. If you go please share with us what flavor you make. 🙂

I haven’t started this post with a theme or a thought, and I’m trying to write it while a three year old is singing a freshly minted song at full volume four feet from my head.

Anyone that has spent any time with a three year old knows that as soon as I typed that, the song and location changed.

She’ll be back.

I know that there are “daddy” blogs. I get irritable because all the links that seem to cross my attention are on all of the “mommy” blogs. You know, because dad’s too busy watching football, or bench pressing a truck, or working 90 hours a week. It’s irritating, and in my opinion, quite lazy. Look – I get that everyone has different perceptions of the “ideal” family. I get that sometimes the “traditional” roles make sense. What I don’t get are the generalizations that the only thing the kids do with dad is going to the ball game or vacation or fishing or something.

I take my role as a father pretty seriously. I’d like to not screw this up. I think that’s why it bugs me when the inept dad puts on a diaper backwards or calls for “mom” as soon as something isn’t easy to deal with in a commercial or movie. I need help from Amber, but we’re a team – it’s not the expert and the apprentice. We’re both figuring this out as we go.

There are some places where we break on traditional lines; she handles medical and I handle electronic. But, during the typical day, she handles the morning, and I handle the evening household responsibilities. Both of us handle the “emergency” bathroom requests which are less about emptying a bladder and more about checking out a new bathroom.

All this isn’t to say that I can’t poke fun at myself or the stereotypes. I’m not some humorless robot. Although I will be asking if you’ve seen Sarah Connor recently.

I’m all about stealing ideas and trying stuff that sounds like it might help make a few decent people. That’s pretty much the point of things like our international days. If we can start with an understanding that everyone starts out as a kid that wants to play and break things and irritate adults, and everyone eats food.

I’ll chime in more later.

The countdown has started; International Day Haiti is next Sunday, which means I have to find and pick the recipes to make. This involves me opening 30 or 40 tabs all at once and pissing off my computer. For this International day, I have found what looks like a great website to help me. I try and find a breakfast dish, as well as the big lunch dishes, plus of course a desert. If I can find a unique drink, that makes that whole thing come together nicely. I also make sure that there is at least one vegetation dish. I like to plan ahead and have back ups because some of the ingredients can be hard to find. Haiti, for example, uses some fruits that are not an easy find here. Also, because of the kids the recipes with large amounts of rum had to go. They have no tolerance and last time ran their bikes into a tree. Keeping all this in mind the preliminary menu is as follows:

Breakfast: Labouyi Bannann (Plantain Porridge)

Lunch: jus papaya to drink. vegetarian-marinade ,  and Haitian pate with du riz cole 

Desert: tablet cocoye