KuKuKawaii: Family Day

This is our second year celebrating Family Day, thanks to Mr. McGuinty, who back in October 2007, declared the third Monday in February to be a new Annual "Family Day" statutory holiday for the province of Ontario. Good call, Dalton. Without this most important holiday, we would have been working straight from January 2 until April 10, before getting a nice long weekend. That’s just way too long to bear, especially while enduring the winter blues.

Our family took advantage of this holiday by playing board games that we hadn’t played in a long time. First, we played “Settlers of Catan”. We used to play this game pretty much every Friday Night, until all of Derek’s favourite Animes got re-scheduled to Friday nights. We just didn’t bother to re-schedule Family Game Night to another time slot. So, that was that. I think the last time we played this game was back on March 29, 2008, when we participated in Earth Hour.

Earth Hour is an Annual International Event created by the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature/World Wildlife Fund), held on the last Saturday of March, that asks households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change.

I remembered we had a lot of fun playing that game last year, when we had to rely solely on candlelight to see what we were doing. Colin had won that game last year. But, given that he was the “Banker”, the person in charge of giving out the “Resources”, and we were playing in semi-darkness, there was a very reasonable chance that he could have cheated. This time around, Derek won the game, but that was because he got to go first. I know, I know, I’m a sore loser.

We also used to play “Scrabble” quite often, but the boys, including Dick wandered back to their own favourite electronic games, while I started to take an avid interest in the Internet, with things like Facebook, Blogs, Forums, etc. etc. to pass the time, we started to split apart and played in our own little worlds. Because of Family Day, we made a conscious effort to play together again, as a Family and it is such a great way to re-connect and build memories.

Scrabble is one of my favourite games because I love any kind of Word Games including Crossword Puzzles, Jumble, and other word Logic Games. I fully expected to beat the pants off the others. This game started slowly for me. In fact, I was consistently trailing throughout the whole game …. til the end, of course. Being the “Comeback Kid”, I came in for the kill at the end, with a dramatic finish. I kept struggling with having too many vowels. They weren’t even the good vowels. I was stuck with a lot of “I”s and “U”s. Fortunately, what saved the day for me was that I always had the “Blank” tile to begin with, but I kept it as my secret weapon, until lo and behold, I picked up the second “Blank” tile near the end of the game. So, I’m thinking what am I gonna do with 2 “I”s, an “A”, an “O”, an “R” and 2 “Blank”s???? Then I spotted an opening on the board, and used up all seven of my last tiles to make the word: ORIGAMI. Can you believe that, Origami is one of my most favourite activities too and it saved the day for me. This is telling me something. Origami, is going to figure into my future Retirement Plans somehow. Hmmm……

So anyways, there’s probably nothing worse than a Sore Loser, except for maybe a very Annoying Self-Satisfied Winner. Please excuse me while I savour this moment.

YEEESSSSSS!!! (Pumps Arm in the air a few times) Neh, Neh, Neh, Neh, Neh (Places hand over nose, while wiggling fingers and sticking tongue out). O.K., Now, I’m done.

*** On a side note, just picked up the mail and found out that Colin got accepted to Ryerson for the Bachelor of Commerce - Information Technology Management Program. *** Yay!!! I'm so proud of my Colin!!!!

Playing "Settlers" during Earth Hour in 2008