Randoms from the Month of MARS!

"Hope everybody out there's liking my month. . ."

Hi folks.

Oddly enough, despite the fact that March was really, really insane for our family - what with another Daddy/Daughter dance, St. Patrick's Day, Spring Break, a Clearwater vacation, a grandparent visit, and a moving truck of crap being loaded and driven back up to Michigan - there's surprisingly little to show for our monthly installment of Random for the month.

I attribute this to the fact that whenever we weren't working, or otherwise occupied in the aforementioned undertakings, we were usually sitting around the house and staring at a wall, decompressing from crazy.

Check it out:

Alayna poses with some of the boxes I cleared out of the back patio.  As you can see, it's kinda been a lack-luster Fall/Winter season for craft beer samplers (I had better luck with sixers and big bottles, but was nevertheless let down by the larger boxes.)  Not looking forward to Spring's offerings. . .

This isn't' anything out of the ordinary, but I wanted to brag about the price - $11.99.  Seriously.  That's unheard of.

Kris and I refused to clean the girls' room for a week, and they counter-refused.  After a week, this is what we ended up with (eventually, the girls were forced to take care of it. . . I hate kids.)

Abby channels her inner Tyson.

Rainbow cake.  Just 'cause.

The girls help Kris with her Hippie Cake.  Not sure exactly how it works (what am I, a girl?), but they had a fun time doing it.

The vultures circle the stove.

Cakes don't bake fast enough.

One thing March brought about was the introduction of a new video game system for our Wii U I picked up for the girls - Disney Infinity.  This system - while somewhat of a money pit - requires you first purchase the game (generally in a starter set, which includes the game, a figure base, two power discs, and a few figures), and then you can buy different figures and power discs to customize and build your own worlds, games, and adventures.  I could go into a lot of detail, here, but it'd probably bore anyone who wasn't already considering purchasing this system themselves.  I'll just instead assure you that it's called 'Infinity' for a reason. . . it's like owning a cabinet full of different games in one.

Disney Infinity 1.0 (all these characters, discs and worlds for this series comprised the first wave, but work with the newer version I just bought the girls.)

Long story short, the girls love it.  The set I bought for them contained Stitch (from Lilo and Stitch) and Merida (from Pixar's Brave), along with two adventure discs and the figure base (see image at right.)  This was one of two starter sets for the updated 2.0 version (the others featured three of Marvel's Avengers, which I didn't think would go over as well for the girls.  

The interactive figure gameplay is what really sells it for Alayna and Abby; essentially, whenever you place a different figure (which each cost around $9 on Amazon. . . or $13 in a Toys R Us or Gamestop) on the base, they're instantly brought into the game and you can play as that character.  Each figure also unlocks a ton of in-game features and levels, which is cool.

Chaos.

What I like about this method of gameplay is that you can swap figures in and out of a level or world without having to reset or pause the game.  Considering how frequently little kids change their minds, this is extremely helpful - it's not uncommon for either girl to trade out their playable figure three or four times in a twenty-minute bout of playing.

Photo courtesy of the Cannonball.

Knowing Yours Truly, it should probably come to no great surprise that we didn't have a mere two figures for very long.  I bought a used Black Widow (Alayna's favorite superhero) for $5, and ended up buying Elsa off Amazon, so they had four.  Then, I found a hell of a deal on a lot of three Pirates of the Caribbean figures and their corresponding discs off ebay.

(We also bought them new figures for Easter, but we'll get to that come Easter time.)

Namaste.  Again, photo courtesy of Alayna.  Who else would take pictures of a kid in a bathroom doing yoga with the door closed?

(Enjoy the lilies in bloom pictures while they last, Internet - once they bloom you only have a couple weeks of awesome before they return to being all flaccid and gross.)

I hate my grass.  I will not miss it.

- Brian