The Great Smoky Mountains Adventure Day 5 - Chilling Out and Saving the Galaxy

[Composed 7/13/2019]

Today we celebrated Shabbat by taking a much needed rest day. I planned ahead by bringing the 5 Minute Marvel card game with us to town, and busted it out this morning to play with.

We ran through the game a number of times and I'm still on the fence about it. On one hand, it's awesome: it's Shabbat friendly, filled with great characters that the kids loved playing with and it's cooperative so everyone plays on the same team. On the other hand, I found the game play to be a bit tedious after a while.

We played through the first time having each kid play as one character. This was fun, but they wanted to know why they couldn't play as more than one character? I didn't have a good answer. So for the rest of the games, Shira and I played a single character, and the kids split the remaining ones. Turns out, having more characters in the game makes it easier to play, which was a nice bonus.

This was my first foray into the world of cooperative card / board games and I'm going to call it a success. I'll almost certainly try new games for future trips, as it was an ideal Shabbat activity. If you have any games to recommend, do share!

Another activity we tackled today was finishing the mini-Lego model of Clingman's Dome Shira purchased while at Cable Mill. Because the kids are such Lego aficionados, this was a no-brainer purchase. Yet, be warned if you pick up this or other mini-block sets: the pieces are tiny, the instructions especially challenging to follow and the completed model is terrifically fragile. This may be the perfect set for an older teenager or adult who wants a building challenge and is interested in displaying the result on their desk. It's far less appropriate for a 10 year old who actually wants to play with the resulting creation.

The kids puttered around the rest of the day, learning to play pool, taking a walk through the neighborhood and having an intergalactic battle with their Legos. It was a low key and fun day.

Here's a story from earlier in the week in lieu of pictures from today:

On our first night, after an exhausting day of travel, I was in charge of putting the kids to bed and Shira was in charge of a shopping run at the local grocery. As I was putting D to bed, he informed me that he was hungry and wanted a snack. I texted Shira asking snack suggestions. Her response surprised me:

What's his BS?

I read this as:

Good lord, you've got to be kidding me. That boy needs to be in bed like now, not playing games. Seriously, what's up with his B*ll Sh*t?

I responded calmly that we were figuring out bedtime now and all would be good.

She responded: I meant blood sugar.

Oh. Apparently I was projecting. Shira, smartly, was trying to answer my question of what to feed the diabetic child by first figuring out his blood sugar. I guess it wasn't just the kids who were exhausted.