Busy Weekend - Games, Scary Hill, Drowsy Chaperone & Rick Riordan

Well, we've had an exciting and fun filled time these past few days.

On Friday night, we had some great friends (the Moores) over. First, we went to El Matador for some tasty Mexican food and then came back to our place to relax and play some games. Lynette's sister Karla also came over and played with us later in the evening. I taught Jason and the Moores how to play Puerto Rico. We weren't able to get through an entire game before they had to leave but it was still fun to play (we really have to get together more often guys). After they left, Lynette, Karla and I played a quick game of Cartagena and a crazy game of Settlers of Catan (crazy because the dice hardly ever hit the main numbers but instead hovered around the 10s, 11s, 2s, and 12s).

 

On Saturday we took the kids up to Cherry Hill which was transformed into Scary Hill for Halloween. We started with some mini-golf. They'd modified the decor of the course to include jack-o-lanterns, spiders, bats, witches, vampires, skeletons and more. Then we went down the hill to check out the straw maze. All in all, it was just about the right level of scary for the kids. They have some other activities as well but we didn't have time to check them out because we had to hit the road to visit the cousins.











After Scary Hill, we dropped the kids off at their cousins's house in Logan. While they drove their aunt and uncle crazy, Lynette and I drove back down to Salt Lake for some slightly belated anniversary celebrations. We did a quick dinner at Chilli's and then hopped over to Hale Centre Theatre. We were there to see The Drowsy Chaperone. We'd already seen the show ~2 years ago but it was so much fun we decided to see it again. Hale has an "in the round" style theatre and our seats were back behind the left shoulder of the "man in chair"'s chair and up in the rafters we could see that we were behind the plane, so I was initially worried. However, true to form, Hale did an EXCELLENT job of moving the action around so nobody was excluded. The cast was fabulous, the set was great and the show was awesome. Just silly fun.

Sunday was officially the day of rest....after church we drove up to Logan and picked the kids up and came home and relaxed.

Monday we had work and school but on Monday night, the boys and I went out to Salt Lake to meet Rick Riordan (author of the "Percy Jackson" series among other work). I've brought the kids signed books from authors before but this was the first time they got to go. It started with a little presentation from Rick followed by a general Q&A. Then we waited in line to have the books signed. To help streamline things they had some specific rules about signing groups, number of books to be signed and how long you could spend at the table. That aspect felt a little mechanical but it allowed a TON of people to get through. The boys had a lot of fun.

And now, we fall back into some more general routine for the next few days...which is fine since the past few days kept us all very busy. It'll be nice to slow things down a bit. :)