A Scrabble Game Gone Awry

Well, we made it to March and Daylight Savings Time! Spring is right around the corner now...

(I'm going to keep on saying that 'til it's TRUE).

This weekend was actually rather fun and relaxing. To begin, Jon surprised us by coming home earlier than usual on Friday night. Most weekends, when he's able to come home, he arrives about 9 pm, but this time he pulled into our driveway around 6 pm. So we were able to hang out and have some "bonus" family time.

Saturday was Susan's 21st birthday. We didn't see her, of course, as she lives in West Virginia, but we talked to her on the phone a couple different times. We sang Happy Birthday to her (Emma added "cha cha cha" in all the right places).

She had plans to go out with friends later that evening, but also said her mom was making ham dinner for the family, and Susan's boyfriend (Jay) was invited.

Originally we had planned to go to Eric's 50th birthday party in Arnold, but didn't make it over because Leila still had her cold and we had a somewhat impromptu visit from Laurie and Mark on Saturday.

We had invited Laurie and Mark over earlier in the week, but they weren't sure if they could make it. We didn't find out for sure that they were coming until Friday night.

Their ability to come see us (or not) depended on the quality of the loaner car they received. Laurie's vehicle was banged up pretty badly last weekend, when a customer's trailer came off its hitch in their restaurant parking lot.

Leila's lingering "cold" may have something to do with teething. After 10+ months of no teeth, she now has five tiny little teeth poking their way through her gums.

Laurie and Mark arrived mid-afternoon Saturday. They brought with them some excellent steak from the restaurant's "vault", which Jon and Mark seared to perfection on our outdoor grill. We added bread and salad and baked potatoes to the mix, and had a simple but memorable meal.

We sat around and visited for awhile, but went to bed pretty early. The next morning we had a big breakfast and played board games.

The last game of Scrabble with Laurie was interesting. It began very earnestly and precisely, with a dictionary and the game rules close at hand; Laurie carefully recorded each player's score on a sheet of a paper and offered Michael and Emma mature lessons on thinking up their own words, positive game attitude, etc.

I joined the game late. Laurie was of the opinion that each player should come up with their own original words, but I subversively gave Emma a little bit of help every now and then.

Word by word the game progressed. It didn't take long for me to tie Laurie's score (not that score matters, of course-- just trying to record the facts, here) and Michael and Emma followed us closely. It was anybody's game...

At some point I accidentally bumped the game board. Yes, Don... it WAS an accident. Some of the pieces at the bottom of the board got jumbled up and slid out of place. At first we tried to recreate the lay-out of the words, but some tiles were simply too messed up to fix. We couldn't remember how they went.

So I came up with what I thought was a reasonable suggestion: put the tiles in question back into the bag and play from there. Of course, that would have added maybe ten more minutes onto our game, and Laurie and Mark were thinking about going...

So what does Aunt Laurie do? A classic Bragg kid-style "tilting of the board", in one naughty movement sweeping all the pieces off till the board was empty, then doing a defiant little Dance of Anarchy atop the empty game board while Mikey and Emma looked on in disbelief and amazement.

Hmmph.

Actually, I loved it. How quickly Laurie's school marm facade disappears under the competition and adversity of a Scrabble game with her sister. Hee hee.

Laurie and Mark left a little earlier than they might have otherwise because of snow and road conditions in their part of the state. They did make it home safely, but only after a long and treacherous ride. They passed about seventeen accidents along the way, including semi trailers that had jack-knifed.

So it's probably just as well that Laurie didn't let that Scrabble game drag on forever (but STILL-! Geez-! ).

Other big news this weekend: Leila is crawling! She's been getting up into the crawling position for awhile now, but this is the first time she's made several consecutive movements of crawling motion together. It was pretty cool that Jon was home to see that.

Well, Mom and Dad will probably read this posting in Arksansas. They left with Bill early Saturday morning, heading south to visit my brother Don and his family. They'll be there a week before heading back to Wisconsin. Safe travels (and have fun!), Mom and Dad!