Thanksgiving Plus

     Well, it's been a while since I posted something here, although I did get sick (see previous post by LynMarie). Spencer and I are both doing well and we all had a good Thanksgiving. We went to Muffin's grandmother's house for dinner, then visited my parents for a couple of days over the weekend. It was great to see Alysha, who was home visiting from BYU. Not so great was the fact that Cassie was watching some puppies for some friends.... eleven puppies. Somehow I ended up helping out.



     I also got to play Die Macher, one of my favorite games. Although I really enjoy it, the four-hour play time means it doesn't hit the table very often. However, Cassie made a deal with me – she'd play the game if I went to see Twilight with her. The movie did have some entertainment value, though probably not in the places that were intended. Unless you're a big fan of the books and feel like you have to see the movie, I'd say… don't.

      But hey, I got a great game out of the deal. Die Macher is a game where each player represents a German political party, trying to win seats in a series of seven German state elections. You get points for each seat you win, for party membership, for media control, and for how well you match national opinion on the issues. I won the last state by one vote, giving me some last-second points, and after we totaled everything up, Cassie and I both had 366 points. There's no tiebreaker in the rules, but we'd agreed to play with a series of tiebreakers, the first of which is seats won, where I had a seven-seat edge. Four hours and it came down to the very end!

     Ok, on to what everyone really wants to see. Here's a picture of Spencer on his nine-month "birthday". He is pulling himself up on everything now, and starting to be a little more confident when he is cruising. He seems to have another gear when crawling, too. For example, he can be pretty fast when trying to make it through the office door before Daddy can get there and close it. One of his latest accomplishments is that he crawled all the way from the family room to our bedroom, which includes a full flight of stairs.



     He now helps out with the laundry, usually by spreading the clothes hangers all over the family room.



     He's still a really happy little boy most of the time, although having four teeth come in at once hasn't been very much fun. All four center ones on the top are poking through now, and it took several tries to get a picture that shows them all. You can click on it to get a closer view... just don't look too closely at his nose.

Weekend with Wuglet

     Since my parents were up at BYU with Alysha for Parents' Weekend, LynMarie, Spencer and I went out to stay with Cassie this past weekend. We got to go to her soccer game on Saturday, where she scored the goal in a 1-0 victory! Sweet! Also, a shout out to her for already memorizing all 25 New Testament Scripture Mastery scriptures! I didn't think to take pictures at the game, and the other shot I took was too blurry, but I did surprise her with this shot.



     Spencer seemed to enjoy himself this weekend. He had fun playing with the dogs, especially Indy. Here are some pictures:









     Spencer also played Power Grid with us -- he was on Mama's team.



     We played the Italy map. Below are a couple of pictures of the board at the end. Coal was in high demand, with none left in the market by the end of the game. In the last round, two good power plants got bid up, with Muffin and Cassie paying 135 each for them. I was last in and picked up a "5 wind" plant for just 44. That left me with enough money to build to 17 cities and end the game a round earlier than they were expecting. Final scores: Todd - 15, Cassie - 13, Muffin/Spencer - 12.