Play Date...Hooray

Since I have the week off from school, I've been having a lot of play dates. Today, my friend Chris came over. One of the highlights of the evening was a dance party. We turned on the fireplace, fired up the iPod, and got out props for some dancing excitement. We dressed as football players, complete with uniforms and helmets. We dressed as baseball players. (I was on both the A's and the Diamondbacks). We pulled out the Wii guitars and pretended to be rock stars. Naturally, we got out some stuffies as dance partners. It was super cool.

Outback

Last night, I went on a date with Mom to Outback (Dad's back was killing him, so he didn't go). They have the best bread in the whole world. I cut off a piece for Dad and wrapped it in plastic so he could enjoy some of the goodness too. I also had Macaroo with Cheese. What a great restaurant!

Pika Pika

 

This weekend, I did a repeat performance of my Halloween costume for Daddy. He was away in the east for Halloween, so he didn't get to see me live in my costume. I did some classic Pikachu poses including thunderbolt and volt tackle. Above, I'm in my volt tackle pose. Mommy wants you to pay special attention to my cool tail, which she made. It's an awesome tail, but is a bit difficult to get around in.

Super Jump Racing

 

Recently, we added a new series to our Hot Wheels racing championships. Previously, we had classic gravity racing. In that form, cars have to go through a loop, then make a jump and continue driving as far as they can. We've also done sveral types of drag racing including the super short and fast 4 lane racing as well as low and high gravity drag racing. Anyway, the new series is super jump racing. The cars, powered by gravity, go down a big hill to a ramp where they do a jump. The car going furthest wins.

In the photo above are the four winners. The gold car is the indoor champ while the other 3 won outdoor series. In the outdoor one, the cars drive from the top of my play structure, so it's a biiiiig hill. The overall champion is the yellow 21 car, a Ferrari.

Trophies

 

A week ago, we finished the soccer season. Despite a specatcular run, my team, the Celtic, managed to finish fourth (we lost in both the semis and the consolation match). But this was still good enough to earn everyone on the team a trophy. I also got a participation trophy (the one with the soccer ball) as well. I love trophies. They're so golden and shiny and make me feel proud for how hard I worked at soccer. I improved a whole lot and am looking forward to next season.

Rats

 

This week we are babysitting our class rats, Pippi and Squeaky. They are both pretty young and extrmely cute. I like to give them lots of fresh veggies--carrots, mushrooms, celery, and so on. Mom and Dad let them crawl on their arms and shoulders but I don't like their claws on me too much, so I prefer to watch them and pet them, but not pick them up. They're sooooo cute!

Reflections

Each year, there is a contest across all the schools in the area called Reflections. The idea is to express a theme through some sort of creative arts. They can be drawing, painting, video, music composition, or photography. Last year, I competed in photography, won in my school, but finished second at the regionals. This year's theme was "Together we can..." For a long time, I didn't think I wanted to enter, but decided to try at the last minute. I combed through my photographs and found several that I thought were pretty good. My favorite was a picture of a leaf surrounded by water droplets on the top of Daddy's car after a rainstorm. I also submitted a picture of some bridges Daddy and I built out of paper one weekend. This was one of his crazy experiments where the job was to design a bridge that can hold the most toy cars without collapsing.

I had good luck this year--I was the only entrant in the photography category in my school, so I knew I was going to win. The judges selected the bridges picture over the leaf, probably because it was more consistent with the theme. We'll see how I do at regionals.

The List

When Daddy was flying back from the east coast, he came up with the idea of "The List." The List is a list of all the many fun games we've played in the past. It helps to remind me of fun things we have not done in a while, so we don't end up doing the same things all the time. I love the list. The first thing that we did, which we had not done since forever, was to play a game of Deal or No Deal. Daddy even made some custom Deal or No Deal cards using index cards for a more realistic version of the game.

We also had our second stuffy mayoral election. You might recall that Fish surprisingly won the first election on a law and order ticket. His idea was to arm all of the stuffed animals with guns so that criminals would be deterred. He tried to run again on this platform, but it didn't work out this time. Our voting system was a runoff system. Six stuffies competed in the first round with the two highest vote-getters competing in the finals for the mayor position. The first round winners were Pikachu, who ran on the platform that every stuffy should have a pet Pokemon, and Bee, who ran on the return to normalcy platform. They defeated Piggy, who ran on fiscal sanity, Ray (a stingray), who proposed water parks, Fish, and Parrot, who ran on a gun control platform.

In the final round, Pikachu prevailed by a vote count of 25-21 over Bee. Apparently, the stuffies though return to normalcy was a boring platform.

Here's The List:

Card Games
Poker
Uno
Deal or no Deal
Card Sharks
Blackjack
Trump Game
Go Boom
Word Card Games
Pokemon Card Game

Board Games
Klutz book games
Backgammon
Risk
Monopoly
Parcheesi
Chess
Sheboygan
Pictionary
Sorry
Axis & Allies
Othello
Pente

Miscellaneous Games
Dominos
Dungeons & Dragons
Marbles
Jenga
Tiddeley Winks
Stuffy Elections
Stuffy Stories
Pass the Pigs
Let’s Make a Deal
Romans and Barbarians

Sports Games
Strat O Matic
Balloon baseball
Hall Ball
Boxing
Sword Fighting
Football plays
Golf – putting
Golf – targets
Vibrating Football
Pick ‘Em
Fantasy Sports
Tiddley Winks Baseball

Racing Games
Gravity Racing
4 Lane Racing
Figure 8 raceway/prediction
Car distance jumping
R/C Car Racing


Wii Games
MLB2k8
Madden
PE Soccer
Wii Sports
Wii Sports Resort
Wii Fit
Boom Blox
Smash Bros
Pikmin
Mario Kart
Super Mario Bros

PC Games
Sim City
Need for Speed
Crazy Machines

Experiments
Bridge Building
Parachute/airplane jumping
Air rockets – distance/time in air
Predict the urn
Rube Goldberg Devices
Simulators

Outdoors
Spaghetti ball catch
Home run derby
Scooter riding
Army Man Wars
Frisbee
Croquet
Bocce
Tennis
Foot racing
Football practice
Soccer – penalty kicks
Treasure Hunt
Kite Flying
Visit Berkeley
Visit SF
Downtown – Farmers Mkt
Swimming
Hot Tub
Amazing Race

Arts
Photo shoot
Scrapbook
Pokemon drawing
Painting
Dance Party
Comic Book Making

Pikachu

This year was another great one for Halloween. We had nice weather and, best of all, I got to be Pikachu. Pikachu, you might recall, is the cutest Pokemon. Mommy made my Pikachu outfit. My tail is a combination of coat hangers and felt while the stripes on my shirt are also hand made. One of Pikachu's best moves is iron tail. My coat hanger tail accidentally did this move in real life as well. A couple of people got banged with the tail including me! It's hard to sit when you have a big tail.

I went trick or treating with my gang of close friends: Chris, Katie, and Jake. We made quite a haul. I have two large bags of candy, all of which I actually like. (I carefully study the possibilities when selecting from baskets on Halloween.)

Candy, friends, and Pokemon--Halloween is one of the best holidays.

Playoffs

This past weekend, my soccer team, the Celtics, won both our playoff games. The second game was played in a driving rainstorm. In fact, they closed the soccer field immediately after the game. While I always wanted to play soccer in the rain, having now done so, I'm not eager to do it again. My long wet hair kept dripping into my eyes, which was no fun.



Despite missing our regular goalkeeper, our substitute let in only a single goal over both games. Our victory means we're going to the semifinals and will finish in the top 4 in the league no matter how we do. We were supposed to go to Arizona this coming weekend, but I don't want to let my team down, so that trip has been cancelled so I can help the team try to get to the finals and win the league.

Soccer is so exciting, but I'm really feeling the pressure in these playoff games.