After the success of our venture with the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game last spring, my colleague and I decided to offer the activity again this fall. We had enough student interest to justify buying two more boxed sets. The photo below shows all the material organized and laid out before students arrived.
I can’t remember if we’ve ever posted about this idea before, but “Yes Day” is a special day where we let one of the children come up with the agenda. Our response to any proposal, within reasonable logistical and budgetary parameters, will be an enthusiastic “Yes!” It’s one way that we try to mix things up a bit, give the kids more agency, and avoid surrounding a fun event with adult-oriented errands (“Yes! Like I said, we’re going to the zoo after we get the groceries, mail grandpa’s package, and water Penelope’s plants!”). Griffin has enjoyed a couple of these over the past few years. Now that Maggie is a big six, she is entitled to her first one. She’s been looking forward to for months (since her birthday… or maybe since her prior birthday).
This summer, it was my turn with Maggie while Sarah will be taking Griffin on his special day next week. Maggie considered many possibilities over the past weeks: going to the pool, going out to eat, seeing a movie, playing games, etc. She finally settled on two activities: shopping and a water park.
The shopping trip was all about finding an emoji pillow that she worships. Not just any emoji: a poop emoji.
Why is this Maggie’s top desire in the world? Who can say?
In preparation for our quest, I did some research. It looked like Walmart was going to be our best bet. I have never actually shopped at a Walmart in the Twin Cities before, so we located one near our next destination and headed out after a delicious waffle breakfast.
Alas, Walmart failed us! There were no poop emoji pillows. Indeed, they didn’t have any emoji pillows at all. A sales rep said that they used to have them, but plush disney pillows have replaced them. Our inquiry, however, produced my favorite response from a retailer in a long time. After I indicated that we were specifically searching for a poop emoji, the young rep turned to Maggie and said, deadpan, “What d’ya want a crappy pillow for?”
Maggie and I consulted. We could either scour the Twin Cities for the pillow, possibly missing out on the water park, or we could try to order it online later. Maggie decided that the water park was the top priority. Phew!
Not far from the Walmart in Eagan is Cascade Bay, a modest sized waterpark with a large shallow pool, a smaller deep pool, a bunch of slides, a lazy river, and a miniature golf course. One advantage: Maggie was over the height limit so she could try any of the slides. The last time we came, in 2014, Maggie was only allowed on the mini-slide in the zero entry pool (see our post from that visit).
We were there pretty much from when it opened until dinnertime. I was exhausted by the end of it, but glad to have had so much focused fun with Maggie. As for Maggie, she didn’t seem tired at all, but once we got in the car, she fell promptly to sleep.
After returning home, Sarah helped Maggie order her pillow. It has gotten much love, already.
Earlier this week, Griffin and Maggie created a four-level dungeon on my dry erase hex tiles. They were so excited about it that they wanted me to play in it, so Griffin volunteered to be the game master. It was his first time running a game and his first original adventure. When I asked what it was called, he replied, “The Dungeon of Doom.”
It was remarkably fun playing this game with the kids. Griffin was creative and clever, and I found myself not just playing with my children, but getting into the game. See below for a few pictures of the wild map. Beneath the pictures are some highlights from the session, written mostly for other tabletop gamers.
Two of my passions—teaching and roleplaying games—came together in this short piece. After running a gaming activity at school this year, the fine folks at Steve Jackson Games asked me to write up a blurb about the experience. It went live this morning.
The target audience is definitely gamers (who else ends up on the SJGames homepage?), but it shouldn’t cause Muggle eyes to glaze over too much.
(See also a PDF version in case the site goes down.)
It landed on a Saturday this year so we got to do things up a bit more than usual. Highlights of the day included:
We haven’t been photo-documenting things as assiduously as we sometimes do, but I did snap this shot of Sarah standing over the crack of doom at Can Can:
We were just stopped at the airport in Kauai because our shoes were too muddy. You can’t export soil from Hawaii to the mainland because it may contain pests. So we have to scrub our shoes and bring them back for inspection.
Fortunately, everyone has been friendly and we have tons of time before our flight.
Today we rose bright and early and drove to the end of the road to hike the Kalalau Trail. When we arrived at the trail head, however, we discovered that it was closed due to the recent heavy rains. Not to be deterred, we hightailed it to the opposite side of the island, where there are numerous additional trail options. (Actually, the road is like a horseshoe with both ends in the northwest, separated by a few miles of the insanely rugged NÄ Pali coast, so we ended up not far from where we started, but 4000 feet up.)
We hiked along the upper rim of Kalalau Valley (4000 feet above our original hike) and then went through the AlakaÊ»i Swamp, purportedly the highest altitude swamp in the world (I’ve read differing accounts). We ended up at the Kilohana lookout where we could peer through rifts in the clouds across the Wainiha, LumahaÊ»i, and Hanalei valleys. As the crow flies, it was hardly any distance to our rental far below, but the sheer cliffs and walls of tropical vegetation deterred us from any foolhardy bushwhacking.
A highlight of this hike was running into someone we knew! Three summers ago, we visited Nate and Christine in Falmouth and met Nate’s friends, Ben and Emory (see our July 2016 post with pictures of Emory). Emory lives on Kaua’i. We knew this ahead of time and had corresponded with him about our trip, but hadn’t made any firm plans to get together. Imagine our surprise as we clambered up a muddy trail and bumped into him! We love the serendipity of it all.
We were proud of those muddy shoes, but they caused us some unexpected hassles at the airport on our way out.
We awoke this morning trapped at the northern tip of the island! It rained heavily overnight causing the authorities to close the Hanalei bridge. This was awesome for two reasons. First, all the other vacationers on the island couldn’t swarm up to the north-end beaches and trails (as they usually do). Second, the atmosphere appeared to have finally run out of moisture. Sweet.
We spent the morning at Tunnels Beach, near our rental, swimming and wishing that we’d remembered to grab snorkeling gear. There were plenty of fish to be seen even without a mask. Eventually we headed into Hanalei for lunch. Most restaurants were closed because employees live on the other side of the bridge, but we were able to find delicious BBQ at Chicken in a Barrel followed by our first shave ice from Wishing Well. If you’ve never had one, where a snow cone is bland, crunchy, and gross, a shave ice is fresh, soft, and delicious. They’re made by literally shaving a block of ice with a sharp blade, producing a fine powder. Add fresh fruit and/or fruit syrups, other toppings (like coconut cream), and maybe a scoop of ice cream, and you end up with a divine treat on a warm day.
Later in the afternoon, the bridge opened so we went south to check out the Kilauea Lighthouse. Alas, it closed just as we pulled up. Plenty of beauty nearby, regardless. We realized that we wanted to be on the beach again for sunset, so we headed back north, grabbed snorkeling supplies from our rental (love it that they have a bin to share) and returned to Tunnels Beach for a jaw-dropping end to a perfect day.
Although we thought the flooding was severe while we were on Kaua’i, the island was devastated by dramaically more serious flooding in April. By comparison with the USGS flood gauge at the top of this post, see the chart below for both March and April. Our “flood” appears before the Mar 17 line. The real flood hit on April 14. See also these dramatic before and after pictures published in Town & Country.
