More Lemonade

Hey, remember this? Well, guess what! Pretty much the exact same thing happened again today. Except this time, instead of $25, I got $100!

And once again, I went right out and ordered another pile of boardgames (not for me though! They're gifts! I'm serious! Ok, a couple are for me. And one expansion. But the rest are for other people! Really, I'm not being boardgame-greedy! Well, maybe a little. Just a tiny bit boardgame-greedy. But I just got a free $100! What do you expect?).

Roots

This picture made me laugh. I'm guessing that the game came out before the miniseries.

Child's Play

PrincessKat is now 3 years old. Know what that means? Time to get her started on BOARD GAMES!!!

Now, finding a good game for a 3 year old is not nearly as easy as for a 5 year old. But there are some good ones out there.

Let's start with her first game, Go Away Monster! Go Away Monster is an excellent first 'game'. The fact is, it's more of an activity than a game because there aren't any winners or losers. But there's taking turns, placing items on a board, some sharing, and some surprises. When PrincessKat first got this game, we must've played it 10 times that day (and the following morning too, if I remember correctly). Basically, you're taking turns pulling items out of a bag. The items are things you find in your bedroom, a bed, teddy bear, chair, and a picture. When you get one of these things, you place them onto your board in the appropriate spot. Every once in a while, instead of bedroom furniture, you pull out a monster. When you do, you say 'Go Away Monster!' and toss them into the box. That's it! That's the game! Sounds simple, right? Maybe even too simple? Well, it's actually perfect for 3 year olds who are learning to play games!

Another game that I found was Batik. This is one of a series made by Gigamic games. I really like the Gigamic games series. They all have very nice looking wooden components. Gameplay for the ones that I have played is super simple, yet interesting. I purchased Batik from another local gamer at a coffeeshop. PrincessKat was with me and we immediately started playing the game while enjoying our hot chocolate. She picked up on it right away! We probably played 6 or so games right there. Each person has a set of shapes. You drop the shapes into this vertical wall (kind of like Connect 4, but with only 1 large slot. If you drop a shape in, and any part of it is sticking out of the top, then you lose. That's it! Again, perfect for a 3 year old.

The last game I'm going to mention is Gulo Gulo. This is a highly regarded game on boardgamegeek.com by boardgaming parents. However, I was never that big of a fan of it. I originally bought it for LilKat2. We played it a few times, but he never got that into it. PrincessKat, on the other hand, LOVES this game. And the funny thing is, she can beat me at this game, even if I'm trying my hardest. This is a GREAT feature to have in a kid's game. In Gulo Gulo, you move around the board by grabbing little colored eggs out of a bowl. There's also a weighted stick in the bowl. If you can get your egg out without knocking the stick over, you can move ahead. If the stick falls, then you have to move backwards. Simple enough. But grabbing those little eggs can be hard! Especially when you have big fat grownup fingers. 3 year olds, however, have little tiny ninja fingers, perfectly made for stealing colored eggs out of a small wooden bowl. And there's a nice built in catch-up mechanism, so that even if you fall behind, you're never really that far back. Again, another great thing to have in a kids game because it means that everyone is always in the game.

You want more? Ok I'll give you one more. Walter Wick: Can You See What I See is a game that is based on a series of books (kind of like 'I Spy' books). In the version that we play, you have a set of tiles. Each tile has a picture of an object, like a rubber duck or a thimble or a yo-yo. In the middle of the board is a set of larger tiles. Each of the larger tiles has a bunch of pictures on them (so one might have a tricycle, a yo-yo, a top, a spool, and a clothes pin). On your turn, you pick one of the tiles in front of you (say, a frog). Then you have to look at the bigger tiles in the middle. If any of those tiles has your picture (the frog) on it, you get to keep it. Each big tile you have at the end of the game counts as a point (some tiles have a special picture on them that make them worth 2 points). That's pretty much it. I thought LilKat2 would like this game because he likes his I Spy books so much. Well, it turns out that all 3 kids like this game quite a bit! And one nice thing was that I was able to pick this one up at Toys R Us (I usually have to go to online retailers to buy my games).

Anyhow, if you have a 3 year old and want to have some fun things to do together at home, these are some great choices for you.

Too Many Games

This morning, I was at the computer and I logged on to boardgamegeek.com. I started looking at some gaming articles, nothing with pictures or anything, just text. Anyhow, PrincessKat saw what I was doing and must have recognized the logo on the website. She immediately ran over, jumped on my lap, and, apparently imitating me, started yelling 'I WANT THAT GAME! I WANT THAT GAME!'

That killed me! Me and Mrs. BigKat were both laughing for quite a while. But the whole time, I was thinking...Do I really act that way? Maybe I do have too many boardgames...

Fooled

I've been waiting all day for the UPS guy to come. He's got a case of my new favorite-boardgame-that-I've-never-played-before-but-I've-read-about-it-and-it-looks-really-cool Monsterpocalypse (or MonPoc as the cool kids call it). I ordered it last week and have been not very patiently waiting.

Well, a little while ago, I heard the knock at the door. My wait was over! The UPS man was here to hand over my box full of plastic dinosaurs, robots, aliens, and other monsters ready to do battle on a paper map amongst tiny plastic buildings. I flew out of my chair, tossed open my office door, avoided plowing over Mrs. BigKat in the hall, and sprinted down the stairs, all in about 4.5 seconds (seriously! If it took me any more than that, I'd be surprised).

I got to the front door only to find...LilKat1 tapping on the door with a big smile on his face.

Grinning at me from ear to ear, he says 'It was me!'

So now I'm back upstairs...waiting...

Too Late

I just saw a video of this dice rolling machine:

It's 7 feet tall and can roll 1.3 million dice per day. It has a computer that takes images of the dice to figure out what was rolled. 

My birthday was last Sunday. I'm a little sad because if I had seen the video sooner, I could've asked for one. But now it's too late...

My Birthday

My birthday was last Sunday, so we had a nice long birthday weekend. Here are the highlights:

Saturday

• Took the whole family out for a round of frisbee golf. There's this elementary school not too far away that has its own frisbee golf course on it. It ended up being perfect because the holes weren't too far away from each other, so the kids had an easier time with it. And the whole place is fenced in, so we didn't have to worry about PrincessKat running away somewhere.


• Mrs. BigKat took LilKat1 shopping, so I was able to have some time with LilKat2 playing boardgames. I showed him a couple that he'd never played before: DVONN and Carcassonne: The Castle. I thought he might be a little young for them, but he caught on to the rules for both of them quite easily. He actually thumped me pretty good on Carcassonne. I think the final score was 101-38. Sure, I helped him a bit on his turns, but he really did quite well for himself.

Sunday

• I taught Sunday School. It was my last regular class of the year! Next week, we're having an in-class celebration. And the following week, we're having awards and games. After that, it's summer. I'm a little sad to see all of my 2nd graders 'graduating' out of my class!
  


• After lunch, I got to open my presents. I got a bunch of cool stuff! First, I got a whole bunch of boardgames:

Yspahan - I've been wanting this for a long time. A fairly quick, family oriented boardgame that uses dice in an interesting way. The rules are pretty simple, but there are a few different ways to score points, which I like.

Powerboats - A fast paced boat racing game with a modular board. Mrs. BigKat and I tried it out right away. It's quite fun. The interesting blue 3 sided dice that it comes with are quite cool. I'm looking forward to showing it to the boys.

Jamaica - Another racing game, but this time it's pirate ships. I still have to read the rules, but it looks like something that will be fun for grownups and kids to play together.

Stratego - Did you know that there's a revised version of Stratego? I showed LilKat1 how to play the original version a while ago, and we had fun with it. He bought me the revised version. In this one, all of the pieces have their own special abilities. Can't wait to try it out!

• I also got a big pile of candy. Did you know that they made chewy lemonheads? They're really good! And they come with apple, grape, orange, and cherry too. They're called something like Sour Chewy Lemonheads AND FRIENDS. The only problem was the PrincessKat got ahold of them, put a whole bunch in her mouth, decided they were too sour, and spit them on the carpet, leaving a kind of rainbow colored shotgun blast of candy stains on the carpet.

• In the afternoon, I got to cook. I made paella! I was going to make it with chicken and linguica. But I don't know how to get the chicken to be done at the same time as the rice. So I cheated and made the chicken separately on the grill (using my new favorite chicken grilling technique that I saw in last month's Cook's Illustrated). The paella turned out pretty good, but not perfect. The flavor was great, but some of the rice was undercooked. But I still got to spend the whole afternoon cooking and grilling, which is fun for me.
  


• I did take one break from cooking. The ice cream man came by and LilKat1 bought himself a missile pop with is own money. LilKat2 felt left out, so I grabbed my wallet and chased the ice cream man down the street. Just like when I was a kid!

• That evening my mom and My-Friend-Who-Lies (MFWL) and his wife (MFWLW) came over. After the kids went to bed, we all played a couple of games of Cash 'n Guns. It's an absolutely silly game where you're a bunch of gangsters trying to split up the money that you got from robbing a bank by threatening each other with orange foam pistols. I lost pretty bad at this game. And it's quite possible that I will never win at this game. It turns out that everyone likes to shoot me with orange foam pistols. I don't know why. But even though I lost, it was still a lot of fun.
  


• I think the best part, though was when Mrs. BigKat said that she would never let the kids see this game. After all it uses real foam pistols!

REAL...FOAM...PISTOLS!

Ok...I should probably stop making fun of my wife now...

But REAL FOAM PISTOLS! It just makes me smile everytime I think about it.

• Oh yeah, MFWL also got me the expansion for Galaxy Trucker, bringing my birthday boardgame total up to FIVE!

The next day was good too. Got to beat MFWL in a round of 18 holes of frisbee golf (although he did lose Mrs. BigKat's frisbee by throwing it over a barbed wire fence...that wasn't so good). I also got to spend some fun time with LilKat1 shopping for Star Wars legos. And I bought myself a small game: Hula Hippos! I'm definitely going to have to make a video for that one.

Games for Date Night

My wife and I go out on a 'Date Night' every week. It's something that we both look forward to quite a bit. Just some nice time for ourselves with no kids. One of the things that we like to do on Date Night is to go somewhere quiet and play a quick board game together. Here's a video I made that talks about some games that we like to play when we go out:

If you want to find out more about the games I talked about, here are some links for you:

Hive

Battle for Hill 218

Mystery Rummy: Jekyll & Hyde

Lost Cities

Glory to Rome

Race for the Galaxy

I'm sure that there are tons of other games that would be great for Date Night, or could be easily modified to bring on Date Night. I just wanted to throw this idea out there because it's something that both my wife and I have a lot of fun doing. Yeah, we play board games at home all the time. But for some reason, playing somewhere that's not your house every once in a while is just kind of fun!

The BigKat Deck

My wife and I just celebrated our 10 year anniversary (Yay!). I was trying to think of something creative to give her that would be fun for both of us. I had trouble thinking of anything good, and was about to give up. But then, I found out about a special deal on ArtsCow.com on custom made decks of cards. That led to...

The K-Deck!



The K-Deck allows you to play some of my favorite games, Lost Cities, Battle Line, and Tichu, all from one specially made deck of cards (actually 2 decks smashed together). It also functions as a standard deck of cards. But the best thing about the K-Deck is that all of the cards contain images of our family. For example...

This is what the 10's look like:

Here is an 8:

For Battle Line, here is one of the Tactics cards (used to be 'Fog' in the original game, I renamed it 'Mess'. The picture is from when LilKat2 dumped a whole box of Strawberry Quik on the floor and made sand castles out of it (Quik Castles?) ).

For Tichu, instead of 'The Hounds', we have 'The Cats':

And of course, the single most powerful card in Tichu...the Dragon:

I was quite pleased with how they turned out. Mrs. BigKat got a kick out of them too. On our date nights, we sometimes will go to a coffee shop or library after dinner and play a quick game of something. Now we can bring the K-Deck with us and enjoy a round of Battle Line, featuring our family!

I'm thinking of making another deck for Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper, an out of print game that I'd like to play. But instead of being about Jack the Ripper, I'm going to re-theme it to a game of people in our family stealing desserts.

Even I have my limits

So  I own a bunch of boardgames. I have a room dedicated to boardgames. I own boardgames of many different kinds. I have purchased almost all of my boardgames without having seen (in person) or played them first. Sometimes, I'll buy a boardgame just because it seems like a good deal. I've even bought a boardgame knowing that it probably won't get played very much, but it might be a good idea to have for when the kids are older. I buy a lot of boardgames.

But even I have my limits...

I

I don't think I'm going to be getting this game anytime soon. It's a little too...silly. I didn't think that was possible, but, apparently, it is.

Crokinole

Last month, I decided to order a custom made crokinole board. Yeah, it may seem strange to spend a lot of money on a handmade board for a game that I've never played before. But when you're addicted to boardgames like me, things like this are really not out of the ordinary.

There are a few differnent options for nice crokinole boards. I went with the Hilinski brothers. They're a couple of guys that enjoy making crokinole boards for people. Most places have a line of standard models that are all the same. The Hilinski's are interesting each board they make (with a few exceptions) is unique. You can check out their gallery to see some of the interesting boards that they've made.

Anyhow, after a month of waiting, I finally got the email that my board was done. I just sent in the payment, so the board should be in the mail very soon. It's called Chautauqua Here's a picture of it:

If you want to know how to play the game, here's a video that explains it:

Ingenious

Here's an introduction to another tile-laying game: Ingenious.

This is actually one of my favorite games. It's a great game to play with people who are new to boardgaming. I even taught my dad to play this!




It may be hard to notice, but you might be able to tell that my box top is slightly damaged. I bought this game as a 'Ding and Dent' game from an online retailer. Several online retailers sell games with damaged boxes at a slight discount. So if you don't care about what your box looks like, 'Ding and Dent' games are an option that can save you a little bit of money.

Wasabi!

Ok, maybe I'm starting to have a little too much fun with these boardgame videos...

Now I own several racing games. I own a few detective games. I have a whole bunch of train games. But I only have one game about sushi making -Wasabi!

Here's a short video introduction to the game. Keep in mind that there are a lot of rules that I don't go over. I just wanted to introduce the game and give you a brief overview of what it's about. It really is one of the more unique games in my collection, and it's definitely near the top of the list as far as nice looking games. If you're interested in finding out more details, there's a lot more information at Board Game Geek.

Anyhow, enjoy the video!

Worm Up!

Recently, Eagle Games had a nice sale and I was able to get a big stack of games for not a whole lot of money (7 games for just over $70! Woo hoo!). One of the games I got was Worm Up! I had never heard of this game before, so I did some research on it. It actually looked really fun, so I picked it up.

Good call by me! We played it last night loved it.

Here's a short video I made so you can see what the game is like:



I forgot to mention one important rule. The lower numbers get to move before the higher numbers. So if you play a 4, you don't get to move as far as someone who played a 7, but since you're moving first, you get first shot at cutting them off.

Anyhow, like I said, I've only played this game one time, but I think it's great. It's fun, it's silly, and it plays really fast. It won't be a 'Main Event' type game at your game night, but it's definitely a great warm-up act.

(By the way, Eagle Games still has several games on sale. They also have free shipping if you purchase over $70. Not a huge selection, but you could get some good deals if they have what you're looking for.)

Hey! That's My Fish!

A little while ago, I was telling a friend of mine about my boardgames. He asked what kind of games I had, and you know what? I had a really hard time answering him! First of all, I have a wide variety of games, so it's kind of hard to put them all into one category. Also, giving a brief description of a game can give a sense of what the game is about, but may not necessarily show why the game is fun (oh sure...your game about the 1960 election sounds really fun...weirdo...).

I think seeing a game, and watching a small sample of how it plays is much better than me trying to describe it. So I thought it would be fun to make some short video clips introducing some of my games. The first one I did was for Hey! That's My Fish! Here it is:

I forgot to mention a couple of things (like the fact that the number of fish on each tile is the nunmber of points that you get for that tile. So tiles with 3 fish on them are worth more than tiles with 1 fish). But I think this is a pretty good introduction to what I consider to be a very solid family game.

A New Way to Waste Time on the Computer

I was looking around BoardGameGeek the other day and I found a cool new game. Actually, the game isn't THAT new, it's been out for a year, but for some reason, I hadn't really paid any attention to it. The game is called The Battle For Hill 218. It's a card game that uses a kind of a WWII setting (probably why I didn't look at the game. I didn't think Mrs. BigKat would be interested in playing). But it really is more of an abstract tile placement game. So much more like Hive (one of our favorites) or Blokus or even Dominoes than a military simulation-type game.

Each side gets their own deck of cards. There are 7 different types of cards (tanks, infantry, heavy weapons, paratroopers, artillery, special forces, and airstrike), each with their own powers (but again, these cards could've easily been re-themed to be dragons, knights, and wizards, or Ewoks, Stormtroopers, and Wookies. So if you don't like the WWII theme, just try and ignore it. There really is a clever little game here).

The game starts with one card in the middle, Hill 218. Each player has a starting spot on either side of the Hill card. You take turns placing your cards around the hill in kind of a grid form. The special abilities of the cards determine where you can place cards and how you can get rid of the other guy's cards. Some cards can be place next to other cards (like infantry), some cards can be placed diagonally from other cards (special forces), and some can be put anywhere (paratroopers). Some cards can get rid of other cards by themselves (tanks, artillery), some cards need the support of other cards to do this (paratroopers, heavy weapons). The object is to take control of the other player's starting spot. If you can manage to do that, you win the game.

It really is a fun, clever game that plays quickly, like 15 minutes or so. Perfect for when you have just a few minutes at lunch and you want to play something. It's also quite portable; you can fit it in your pocket.

Since the game is just a pack of cards, it's pretty cheap. If you found it in a hobby store, it would probably cost you about $10. Online, you can get it for around $7. But the best thing is that they've made a computer version that you can play by yourself or with a friend (LAN only though). You can go here to try it out yourself.

The AI is pretty good. The first few times I played it, it destroyed me. I'm pretty new to the game, but am starting to get a grasp of it. It took a few plays to begin to figure out the best way to use the different cards. At this point, I can hold my own. I even won once!

Anyhow, if you're ever wanting to waste some time on the computer and find yourself firing up a solitaire game of some kind, try out The Battle For Hill 218 instead. Even if you don't like war games. Just give it a try. Once you start to understand some of the tactics, I think you'll be hooked.

By the way, if you're interested in purchasing the actual card version of the game, this thread might be worth a quick read. It sounds like they're close to selling out their initial print run. But they're considering doing another printing with some extra features.

Clearance Day 2009

About this time last year, Target put a bunch of stuff on clearance and I was able to get a big pile of toys. They put their stuff on clearance yesterday, so Mrs. BigKat was able to go down and snag a few toys for not so much money.

There weren't as many interesting things as last year, but I did manage to get a remote control flying bug for only $10. 

I also got a boardgame to play with the boys: Spy Trackdown: Find-the-Enemy Strategy Game. From what I understand, it's kind of like that old game Stop Thief, which was one of my favorites as a boy. 

It's probably not a game that I would choose to play with Mrs. BigKat, but it looks like a fun activity to do with the boys. I think they'll like it. It was just over $6.

And from what I can hear down the hall, LilKat2 is very much enjoying his new Shake 'n Go Batwing Flyer. It was under $5.

Oh, PrincessKat just came and showed me a new dolly. Not sure what it is or how much it costed. But she's quite happy with it.

So nothing super-spectacular this year. But I did hear a rumor that they have Yahtzee Free for All for just over $2. Now that's a deal! If you happen to be at Target, take a look at the game aisle and pick one up.

Edit: Ok, apparently the dolly that PrincessKat got was a Little Einstein's June doll that she's been wanting for a VERY long time. The original price was over $20 and Mrs. BigKat was not willing to pay that much. But I guess she was ok with it for $5.

Spin-4-It

I made a game order a little while ago and got this free gift attached to it. Here it is:

It's a gadget that you use to figure out who gets to go first in a game. Totally unnecessary, right? But for some reason, we use this each time we play a game now. Part of it is so that we don't have to try and remember who went first last time. But the other part is because the thing is just so darn cool! You give it a little, tiny flick and it just keeps on spinning and spinning and spinning.

Don't believe me? Watch, I'll prove it to you. I'm going to flick it right now and see how long it takes to stop...Ready...Here I go...

...still going...

...still going...

...still going...

...starting to slow down...

...almost there....

...ok, it stopped.

See? With just a little flick, it spun around for 59 seconds!

Ok, so maybe you're thinking, 'Hey! That's too long! I don't want to wait that long to find out who goes first!' But it's actually a good thing. It gives you time to go get your snacks, get a nice beverage (which does NOT go on the same table as the boardgame!), go get some napkins (because you are NOT touching my cards without wiping your hands Mister-Nacho-Cheese-Dorito-Fingers!).

If it looks like something you want to buy, buy it from Game Surplus. It's only 80 cents. You'll have to pay shipping so you might as well throw some fun boardgames in your cart while you're there. 

2 Good Games

Since Target stopped selling Heroscape, I haven't been too interested in the game aisle at Target. But on BoardGameGeek, I read about a couple of new Hasbro games that have been getting some pretty good reviews. This weekend, I decided to go ahead and give them a shot.

The first is Yahtzee Free for All. First of all, the box is very cool. The 6 sided box bottom expands into the game board, and the 6 sided box top is a felt lined box for rolling the dice in. 

Now, Yahtzee is not a game that I really enjoy very much. I can't ever think of a time where I'd challenge someone to a game of Yahtzee. There isn't any player interaction, the decisions are all kind of the same, and it seems to drag on. Yahtzee Free for All is a little bit different. It still uses the same familiar Yahtzee combinations (Long Straight, 4 of a Kind, Full House, etc.), but you can only use certain ones on any given turn. Three cards are placed in the middle of the board that show what combinations can be played. In addition, player have a chance to STEAL other players cards for combinations that they've already rolled. In other words, you may have just rolled a Yahtzee, but if I get a higher Yahtzee before your turn comes around again, I get your card, and you get nothing! How's that for player interaction!

Now this game is still a Yahtzee game, so there's a lot of luck and dice rolling, which some people just don't like in their games. But if I wanted to play a game with people who are not into boardgaming as much as I am, I think this would be a great game to pull out. It's Yahtzee, so it's familiar to everyone. But at the same time, it's got some improvments that make it a lot more fun. Definitely a good family game that parents and kids can play together.

By the way, this game was designed by Richard Borg, who has also designed a few of my other favorite games, including Memoir 44.

The other game I got was Sorry! Sliders. Again, I'm not a big fan of the original game. Even when I was a boy, I didn't like Sorry. But you know what? It doesn't really matter because this game has NOTHING to do with the original Sorry game at all.

Let me emphasize this important piece of information...this game has NOTHING to do with the original Sorry! game.

Well, ok, there are pieces that look like Sorry! pieces, and you have to move your little Sorry! pieces home. But that's it!

First of all, this game is a dexterity game. More along the lines of shuffleboard or carroms or paper football than a traditional boardgame like Sorry! You slide these oversized Sorry! pieces (each player has 4 of them) that have a ball bearing inside of them down a track towards a scoring area. You get points based on where your piece lands. Scoring doesn't occur until all of the pieces have been slid, so there are many opportunities to knock other players pieces off of their desired locations, knock one of your own pieces onto a better scoring spot, or carrom your piece off of pieces already in the scoring area to get to a good position on the board. 

I played this 4 player with Mrs. BigKat and the 2 LilKats. We had a great time! The boys absolutely loved it. I knew that LilKat2 would enjoy it, since he already loves Pitchcar (another great flicking game). But LilKat1 also had a fantastic time with it. At bedtime, he even asked if we could quickly play it again (sadly, it was a school night, so we couldn't extend his bedtime and play).

I like having nice components in games, but in dexterity games, this is crucial. Sorry! Sliders certainly delivers in this area. The sliding pieces actually slide quite nicely on the tracks. You really need to use some finesse to get your pieces to land where you want them to.

So there you go! Two fun family games that you can get right at your local Target/Walmart-type store. No having to go to specialty shops or searching online. Right now, Target it selling Sorry! Sliders for $15. And at my Target, Yahtzee Free for All was on clearance for just under $7 (bargain!).

R & R Games

There are 3 kids at our church that have had an incredibly difficult year. Their mom died from cancer near the beginning of the year. Then their dad basically stopped being their dad to them, so they had to go into foster care. Our family has been trying to think of something nice that could be done for them at Christmas-time.

I found out about this generous offer from a boardgame blogger who wanted to buy a game for someone who might need one. I wrote to him about the kids at church. A nice game company, R & R Games, also found out about this offer, and they wanted to help out as well. There were several submissions for people who seemed like they could really use a nice game at Christmas, and they offered to send games to anyone that the original blogger could not send stuff to.

I emailed back and forth with the R & R Games representative and found out that they are going to be sending a very nice Christmas package for the kids. They will be recieving several games, Flea Circus, Horse Fair, Bugs, Birds, and Beans, Take your Best Shot, and First Hand. They will also be getting a very cool toy (actually 2 of them), Hide n Seek Safari. 

The only ones of these that I am familiar with are Hide n Seek Safari and Flea Circus. Hide n Seek Safari is basically an electronic version of the 'Hot/Cold' game. Someone hides an electronic stuffed animal somewhere around the house. Then the other person searches for it with this wand. When the seeker gets closer to the animal, the wand starts to light up. The closer you get, the more lights turn on. (The kids will be getting 2 of these).

Flea circus looks like a fun card game for kids to play with their parents. It was designed by a well known game designer, so there is some actual interesting gameplay (which isn't always there in kids games).

I was blown away by this act of generosity from R & R Games. If you like purchasing products that support nice companies, I think R & R Games certainly qualifies. Like I said, I'm not familiar with some of their games, but if you have young kids, I don't believe you could go wrong with Hide n Seek Safari or Flea Circus.

Things are starting to go a little bit better for the 3 kids. They are now living with a very nice foster family (who also go to our church). There was no one in the area that would've taken all 3 of them in; they would have had to have been split up. But this nice family decided that they were going to help out and took all 3 of them into their home. Their dad has not been in contact with them very much. He did not even see them for Thanksgiving. But some relatives on the East Coast found out about how bad the situation was and have started to try and figure out a way to take care of them.

Edit: Since I'm talking about nice game companies, I thought I should mention something that GMT Games did in the fall. They offered 2 free games to anyone who recently lost their job recently. I own a couple of their games, Command And Colors Ancients and Battle Line (which, by the way, was designed by the same guy who created the Flea Circus game mentioned above!). And I'll be purchasing another of their games, Manoeuvre, this week. So there you go, yet another nice game company that produces good games!