Look at me! I made a game!

This was the final project for my Python class. I made a Doctor Who game!

(Up arrow to move forward, L/R arrows to turn, space bar to shoot. Oh, and the audio won't work in Safari. Chrome is probably the best option, but I've been told the game runs all right in Firefox as well.)

First/Last Day of School

Third year running

We have gone to pick strawberries at Miller Farms every summer since 2011. This morning was our third trip. I took some pictures! I've taken pictures every time, in fact.

Eleri in 2011

D'awwww...

Eleri last year

Yeah, didn't get her face that year. Sorry.

Eleri this morning

Growing up!

Soren in 2011


Soren last year


Soren this morning

In years past, we've gone to the farm in late April or early May. This year we didn't make it up there until the very last day of the "pick your own" season. Between the lateness and the fact that we had a huge wind and rain storm through the region yesterday, I fully expected the fields to be a muddy mess with almost no berries left. Rarely have I been so glad to be wrong! This year's weather was the nicest by far, and our haul was the biggest. We came home with just over 5 lbs of berries, all gathered in just about 25 minutes. Impressive!

After our exhausting labor in the fields, we hit the farm store and got some ice cream. All told, a very fruitful morning! ;)

Blackjack!

I forgot to post a link to my Blackjack project for my Python class. Whoops. I'm currently working on a pretty slick Doctor Who-themed arcade game, in the style of Asteroids. I should be able to post a link for that one this weekend. :)

Social butterflies

We've been able to do a lot of visiting with various folks in the last few months. ML was out in early March, then my mom was here, and my friend Amber from high school was in town at the end of the month. In April I got to hang out in person for the first time with Problem Girl and Stimey, some awesome ladies I've "known" online for quite a few years now. And then my friend Mario from California was in town, so the kids and I got to visit with him (he'd never met Eleri and hadn't seen Soren since we moved).

Memorial weekend we spent a bunch of time with a bunch of folks from Unfogged. Tom's been reading that website for years and years, and I read it off & on as well. It's one of those very rare places online where the comment threads are actually worth reading; it's by and large a community of smart, thoughtful people who have interesting things to say. We've met up with various folks from the blog all over the country, and it's always been a positive experience.

So anyway, Memorial weekend, a bunch of folks were converging on DC for a big get-together, had rented a house for a base of operations. We took the kiddos into the city Friday evening, and they of course charmed everyone in attendance. Soren didn't take long to set up a "beer sale" (he would fetch beers from the fridge and deliver them to his customers in exchange for the bottle caps), and Eleri spent a bunch of time stacking and arranging and counting said bottle caps. On Saturday we met up with some people in the afternoon at the National Gallery and wandered from there to the Hirschorn sculpture garden before heading over to the house for another evening of socializing and amusement. Soren started earning actual tips with his "beer sale" and was super chuffed about the whole thing. We didn't get back home that night until super late, but both kids were incredibly well behaved. It was a really fun couple of days.

We were up almost absurdly early the next morning (actually a perfectly reasonable hour, but it seemed early given our late night) to meet up with yet more friends for breakfast. We went to Best Buns Bakery for breakfast sandwiches and holy freaking cow were they amazing. We ate breakfast at a park, hung out for a few hours and let the kids play, and then went back to Best Buns to pick up more sandwiches for lunch. Definitely need to go there again. Wow.

Anyway, that's just a bit of what we've been up to lately. Now that summer's here, I'm sure the kids and I will be out and about a fair bit, so I should have even more to not write about soon. ;)

Social Weekend

We did a ton of socializing over the long weekend, and I do want to write about it, but I can't get to it right at the moment.

For now, I'm going to post last week's Python class project. I built a Memory Game.

Pong

Last week's assignment in the Python class was to make Pong. It was a little tricky, but I did it! Whee!

Nerd arts & crafts

Well. A more accurate title would be "Arty-crafty projects related to my current nerdy obsession, which is, of course, Doctor Who." But that's significantly less pithy.

But you know me. I like to make things. It's fun! So in the past month or so I've:

Awesomeified my purse a bit


And patched some jeans

But it's been a while since I made any custom shirts for the kids. As a matter of fact, I'd never done one specifically for Eleri before. So last week I sat down with her and asked what she wanted me to draw. We went through some options, looked at stuff on Google Image like I usually do with Soren, and she ultimately decided that she wanted this:

(Artist credit here)

Well, I told her I'd see what I could come up with. Naturally, as soon as Soren heard us talking about it, he decided he wanted one for himself, too, so I agreed to make him one as well. Just finished them today, and I think they turned out rather smashingly.

El's


Soren's

Seven years!

Happy anniversary, Tom. :)

Evening Parade

We went to this kind of crazy event Friday night. Tom mentioned a couple of weeks ago that he could get tickets to a "Marine Corps Evening Parade" thing and thought that the kids might get a kick out of it. The Marine Band and the Drum & Bugle Corps were going to perform, and there would be battalion drilling, including the one unit that does their drill without commands (they go through the whole thing completely silent...ah! Here's a video, from last year, but it was basically the same.). So I said sure, sounds neat. Then a week or so ago, he got the official invitation and sent it along saying, "Huh, looks like this is a fancy thing! Opportunity for Soren to wear his kilt!" Uh, yeah, fancy attire, and the parade doesn't even start til 8:45pm. And runs til 10.

So I was HIGHLY skeptical about this being a good idea. Eleri has been..oh, let's just say fragile...lately. Extra fragile. Major freakouts when she doesn't get her way, just horribly unpleasant 3 y.o. behavior. Especially if she's tired and/or hungry. So yeah, fancy-dress event starting almost an hour past bedtime and involving a considerable chunk of time where you have to be QUIET? This did not sound like a good idea. I told Tom maybe he and Soren should just go, and he thought Eleri would probably be fine but conceded that maybe it would be too late in the evening for her after all. In the end, we agreed to just see how Friday was going, see how her mood was by the early evening, and go from there.

Friday I made the kids take it easy in the afternoon, hoping no one would get overtired. El had a bit of whining before dinnertime, but one we sat down at the table, she plowed through all of her food like a champion and was in a perfectly pleasant mood. Like, charming and happy and calm and smiley and cute. So...I figured we were go for launch. So we all got dressed up in our fancy clothes. We drove into DC. We parked and got escorted to our seats...which were in the VIP section. We were seated two rows behind the event's host and guest of honor (Sen. Claire McCaskill). And it was not a spot from which we could very easily make a quick getaway if things were to turn south. Welp, here goes nothing!

And no kidding? The kids were amazing. They were AMAZING. They were all smiley and enthusiastic and sweet and well behaved. There were a few instances of quiet talking when we were supposed to be, you know, not talking, and had to be reminded to whisper, but no one yelled. No one cried. No one got upset or made inappropriate comments or rude noises. And we stayed for the WHOLE thing. All the way to 10:00. The lady sitting in front of us turned around at the end and told Eleri what a wonderful job she'd done, behaving so nicely through the whole thing. It seriously couldn't have gone better. I was flabbergasted. And happy to have been proven wrong. I'm glad we went. It really was quite cool, and everybody had a really good time.