It's about time that I get back to blogging; I just realized it's been over a month since I've created a new post, and I really feel like I need to get back on track.  A lot has been going on this month:

• Our garden is in full harvesting swing.  June had strawberries, which led into cherries, which led into raspberries and then blueberries.  I've been shelling peas for a few weeks now, and harvested about a half cup of currants (the bushes were just planted last year).  There are a LOT of green tomatoes and little peppers, so I'm betting I'll be very busy in the garden harvesting in August.
• The boys have been busy too with day camp, summer reading, and general playing.  We've been playing the board game Ticket to Ride on the table top as well as on the iPad.
• I've been working parties for my Tastefully Simple business and having a ton of fun showing people great food.
• Although we haven't been out in a few weeks, in early July we had two major geocaching expeditions: One Puzzling Day and the Berkshire Geobash.
• And of course the next NIH SBIR proposal submission date is August 6, and I have two proposals I'm working on, so I'll be crazy busy getting those polished and submitted for my customers.

 Oh, and we're planning a return trip to Disney!  Lots going on, that's for sure.

Review: Tsuro Board Game

My husband recently purchased the board game "Tsuro" by Calliope Games after hearing great reviews.  We love to play interesting board games, but sometimes it's hard to find good board games that everyone in the family can enjoy but doesn't take a lot of time.  Tsuro does just that.  We've played with our 9 and 6 year old, and they love it, and the adults find it challenging as well.  It's quick to play; a game can be as fast as 15 minutes, unless you have some players that want to overly think their moves.

Each player has a token, that is placed on one of the markers on the edge of the board.  The token can be placed anywhere.  Each player is then dealt three path cards, then they take turns placing a path card, and moving their token where the path leads.  Once path cards join together, the token can move quite far as the paths twist and turn across the cards.

Tsuro can be played with 2 to 8 players.  We've played with 2 players and with 4, and the dynamic was different in each game.  I can't imagine how complex 8 players could be, planning out moves so you don't hit any of the other seven tokens.

Click on the image below to visit the Amazon page for Tsuro to learn more.

 

It's Monday.

I don't do mornings, and I don't do Mondays, so I really don't do Monday mornings. Although today is that glorious Monday morning after February break, so my darling children and thankfully back in the wonderful confines of school, and I can get back to keeping myself sane. :) We did do some fun stuff last week, like go kite flying in Maine. It was cold, and it was windy, and we came home covered in sand, but it was a lot of fun.

Valentines

Today the kids and I worked on valentines that they'll bring in for their classmates next week.

Perrin had his own idea, so all I did was cut hearts. I used the Accent Essentials Cricut cartridge for this heart. We picked up some googly eyes at Michael's and he used scraps and a pen to make the rest of the face.

Hayden still needs a little more assistance, so I cut hearts and a sentiment from the Wild Card Cricut cartridge and he pasted everything in place. It was messy.


We've done handmade valentines for a couple of years now and it's really fun. It certainly uses up a lot of paper and scraps. The only thing I needed to buy was googly eyes, although after Hayden was done I'm going to need a new glue stick.