It's not about winning (the hell it's not)

For the first time in ages we didn't have anything to do this weekend. No parties, family get-togethers or major shopping expeditions and best of all Tom didn't have to work. He's had a lot on lately and has had to bring work home so that he can meet the deadlines. It's tiresome for everyone, especially him. So with a whole weekend to spend at home what did we do? As little as possible of course. We played chess (yes, we are a whole family of geeks), played with Aislin's train set and built a whole town around it out of wooden blocks, baked scones and huddled round the fire to eat them, had a game of Cleudo (I won and Aislin had a tantrum because she wanted to win), napped and generally slothed around. It was fantastic.

There was some excitement when hailstones fell (see, geeks I tells ya).

All in all it was a lovely relaxing weekend.

We played lots of other games too, Go Fish, Old Maid, Snakes and Ladders - all the old favourites. The girls are very skilled at these games and they are sticklers for the rules. There was a lot of 'debate' throughout - card pairs were counted and recounted, spaces moved were checked and checked again. No-one was getting away with anything.

At one point T did raise an eyebrow when I thrashed Hannah at chess then did a demented kind of ecstatic happy dance about it. Ok, I realise she is 8 years old and I'm........well.... I'm older than her and I realise that I have decades more experience playing chess than she does and I realise that it's enjoying the game not winning that's important and I'm the Mummy and so I should set a good sporting example and be a bit more mature about it. But I WON!!!! What can I tell you, I like winning,

I didn't see him shrinking from the spotlight when he beat Aislin at checkers.

Yep, geeks one and all. Competitive geeks at that.