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I had such a good day yesterday. Henry came home from his dad’s house about 8:30 and gave me my present, the portrait of Animala in the previous post :) And then around 9, his friend Nicolas came to play for a few hours. He’s been taking guitar lessons from Henry’s dad for the past few months, so the boys at least get to say “hi” every Saturday, but rarely have actual playtime. I haven’t seen Nicolas since the boys were 5 or 6 and we moved to Oceanside! I was really happy to get acquainted with him again. He’s a great guy, smart and polite and fun. They played Guitar Hero for most of the morning (I had a few turns as well), with a quick break for real musical instruments, and then we switched to Smooth Moves.

Chloe and Celia came over in the afternoon, with a watermelon, which was a great hit, and we took turns with Smooth Moves until Nicolas’s mom came to pick him up, and pretty soon after that it was time for us to go to Kung Fu and Celia to go to her rehearsal.

Dan came home a bit early and gave me another pile of presents: A Mama Bear swift (walnut!), the new Lileks book (Gastroanomalies, hilarious), a set of watercolors in tubes, a special watercolor paper Moleskine, a bottle of watercolor mixing medium, and a lovely pack of my favorite ultra-fine Sharpies! In the photo, you can also see the pictures and cards than Chloe and Celia and Henry drew for me :)

And then Dan and Henry and I played a game of Agricola in which we used the Occupations and Minor Improvement cards for the first time. It was very fun but those cards add a lot of complexity so it took us something like three hours to finish the game, by which time Bob and Chloe and Celia had come back over to play some more! (Dan won, by the way, but it was a close game. It won’t take three hours next time ’cause we’ll be more familiar with the extra cards!) So then Henry played Wii sports with Celia and we sat around, and then the guys and Celia played Uno Extreme while Chloe and I giggled at Gastroanomalies. It was a wonderful day!