I was thinking about writing a blog called "I was beaten by my dad" but then I thought that might sound like like I was being abused. Of course, that's not the case, it's just alluding to the beating that I got playing Alhambra with my (step) dad and my (step) brother Kevin.
We had a pretty good weekend, starting off with TylerChuit and The Unnamable visiting. We played a few games, including
Small World again. That is definitely a great game!
I had agreed to pick up my brother Kevin from the airport in Sanford on Saturday, so I knew that I had a lot of driving ahead of my on Saturday evening. I thought at first that I was going to be driving there by myself but at the last minute my wife decided that she and the kids would go along too. We had a nice ride, a little rain, but nothing too difficult to deal with. Unfortunately, Kevin's plane was delayed about 40 minutes so we ended up looking through several tourist guides while we were waiting. We came across the
Sleuths Mystery Dinner Shows along with coupons for $6.00 off. We thought that sounded interesting... something to keep in mind for mini-vacations or something.
After Kevin arrived, we went to McDonald's and got a couple
Coca-Cola glasses with our meals before heading home. My wife explained to Kevin that glassware is our soft spot for fast food deals and how we went to Burger King many times a few years ago to collect The Lord of the Rings glasses.
The next morning my kids were the first to wake up, of course, and while I was making coffee, my kids were spending no time waking up Uncle Kevin. My daughter was excited that Kevin was there and wanted me to wake him up. My son just switched on the TV and started playing
Mario Kart. Fortunately, Kevin is great with kids and didn't seem to mind at all. After the morning routine, we decided to play some board games together.
Practically every game I own was new to Kevin, and he remembered me mentioning
The Settlers of Catan earlier, so we decided to play that. The board set up had a pretty evenly distributed the resources, other than clustering the brick together. Kevin was the first one to get The Longest Road right through the middle of the island while Beth and I were fighting over locations near the harbors. Eventually I managed to get the Wool Harbor. This helped with some trades that allowed me to quickly build more road and another settlement until I eventually ended the game by building a longer road than Kevin.
We were considering playing Tennis at the park but decided to wait a couple more hours for it to cool down outside, so instead, my wife and kids played Bowling on the Wii while I read the rules to Alhambra. Its a game that I had played at a PTC GameFest years ago, but it is a new acquisition for me. Not long after we started playing... actually, we hadn't even finished the first round of Alhambra, my parents arrived. We weren't even expecting them for at least a couple hours. So my dad took my wife's spot in the game and we continued on.
I think
Alhambra is a great game, with a good amount of strategy, and relatively easy game play, if your dad isn't trying to steal money from the bank the whole game. My dad always jokes around while he's playing games and then wonders why they take longer than expected. He picked up extra cards so many times during the first half of the game that by the time he started playing legit it was hard to tell. He was doing great though with his tile purchases and placement though. By the time the game was done he had a solid wall around his entire Alhambra, except one small section, and the only tile purchased that he hadn't used was one that he got at the end of the game. He beat me by nearly 20 points due to that wall. Kevin also did pretty good, ending the game with over 100 points.
After that, they all had to leave. Kevin will be back to visit, and do some work, in a couple weeks or so, but it was fun to have him over and we'll definitely miss him.
The kids were still anxious about going to the park and we were ready to play some Tennis. Our friend Nina and just stopped in recently, and her kids were interested in going too, so we all went out for a few hours at the park. By the way, Singulair must be doing me some good, because I had forgotten my inhaler at home and never felt any problems with breathing.
