Apples to Apples; Monkey Pony Monster

First off, here are a couple of pictures of the cats:

That would be Raisins.

And Peanut.

Most of the rest of this post will be about a new game we played, called  Apples to Apples.

You can read through the rules here, but basically, it is about comparisons, and matching descriptive words with nouns.  A good vocabulary and knowledge building game, without the kids knowing they are learning.

Does this boy look like he is learning?

Or this one?

Here’s an example comparison (we only had 3 players, so the boys put down cards and I judged)…

What’s more scenic - an oil spill or a trailer park?

Are Flying Monkeys normal?

And lastly, there was the Genetic Engineering card:

The original subtext on the card was “What DO you get when you cross a monkey with a potato?” but I scratched that out and replaced it with What DO you get when you cross a monkey with a PONY?” in honor of the Jonathan Coulton song, SkullCrusher Mountain…

I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you
But I get the feeling that you don’t like it
What’s with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, you like ponies
Maybe you don’t like monsters so much
Maybe I used too many monkeys
Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?

Sunday afternoon

Let’s catch up.  Friday night my love was working.  I got the boys back, who had a good time at their uncle’s farm.  There was a lot of rain so not much fishing going on, but they did get a chance to go mushroom (morel) hunting and trampoline jumping (not at the same time).  They were happy to be home, and I read them the first chapter of A Spell for Chameleon, the first book in the Xanth series by Piers Anthony.  I read all of his books when I was between their age now (perhaps earlier?) and into my teens.

Once, Boy #2 and I were cuddling on the couch and he asked me to read him a story.  I did a short paraphrase of A Spell for Chameleon and he quite enjoyed it, so I decided to get it for them to read together. At first, they found it a bit boring, perhaps just because of their recent long trip, perhaps because of it’s sophisticated vocabulary, but eventually, they enjoyed it and seemed immersed in it.

On Saturday, Boy #1 went to his friend’s house for the day, as he often does, while we hung out at home in the morning.  In the afternoon, my brother came over to watch the kids, but he showed up early so we got to hang out for a bit.  My love and I then headed up to Chicago to go to the Jonathan Coulton show.  We got there in record time, with plenty of time to kill, so we stopped for a made-to-order salad (yay, garbanzo beans!) and some window shopping.

We’ve seen JoCo once before, last year, but this show was even better.  Paul and Storm opened for him again and were hilarious as usual.  JoCo rocked the house and we had a great time.  His version of Code Monkey was acoustic and slow, causing it to seem more melancholy than normal.

If you haven’t listened to JoCo, I suggest you go to his website and listen to his songs, many of which are free downloads.  You might not get his humor, but that just means you are not a 1337 interwebs geek like me. 

Oh, yeah, and one more thing about that.  You may or may not be familiar with the recent internet meme known as “Rick-rolling.”  Check the wikipedia entry to understand exactly what that means.  Anyway, in the show, JoCo pulled out his sythensizer to play Mr. Fancy Pants for us, and pushed a button that started playing Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up.  He rick-rolled us!!   It was awesome, not only because we got it, but because the entire audience of fellow internet geeks got it, and even more awesome because JoCo got it.  Yay internet.

Lastly, today we went to Dave & Buster’s to celebrate my cousin’s graduation from college.  Boy #2 won over 2000 tickets and was overjoyed.  Now we’re just hanging out and vaguely working on household stuff.  I might even mow the lawn today (gasp!).