Christmas: Round three.

The festive season has been extra good to us this year. We've had three rounds of Christmas.
We had the first, on Christmas Day, with just us and the kids. They had their presents and we all enjoyed some amazing food. Then, we had a beautiful evening at my parents house last week. The kids had their gifts from them, and Aesop handed out the gifts he had chosen for us all. We had a beautiful butterflied lamb and salad, with rhubarb cake and fruit salad for afters. Divine.

On Saturday, Abraham and I had our own wee celebration. The boys went to Mum and Dad's for the night, so we cooked another delicious meal, and exchanged our gifts.
LOVE this whole 'dragging out' of Christmas - totally doing it again next year.

The gifts were wrapped lovingly, and very carefully chosen.

We took turns, undoing bows and revealing treasures. And, oh my, what treasures to be had!

Abraham gifted me the two Adele albums on vinyl, some new knickers, a julienne peeler (I requested this one... he's not making suggestions about getting into the kitchen.. haha), an incredible colouring book annnnd a Lego dress designer set! So perfect.
Can you see that Lego laptop and Canon-esque camera? So good.

My gifts to Abraham were: A stunning robot cushion by a super clever (and lovely) crafter I was lucky enough to meet down in Masterton, Geek Dad book (this review was the reason for this..) and a Razorwyre record.
Razorwyre is a metal band (think Iron Maiden styles.. big hair, skintight jeans..) and Abraham went to high school with the lead singer.

We chowed down on perfectly cooked eye fillet, fresh coleslaw and spicy wedges for tea, and fruit salad with soy icecream for sweets. And it was sweeeeet. Might have been my favourite Christmas so far : )

(Love you, Abraham. Thanks for a choice Christmas!)

A review: LEGO Creationary.

Last week we were, very kindly, asked if we would like to review another LEGO product. This time it was the LEGO game 'Creationary'. We, naturally, jumped at the chance!
I have often looked at this game in the shops, wondering if perhaps it would be a good addition to our family games cupboard. It was neat to finally play it.

The boys were really excited about this one.
We opened the box, and read the instructions - seemed easy enough! We sorted all of the pieces into colours, and the cards into levels of difficulty. Ready to roll!
As a bonus, it looked so pretty all laid out in the box - the design is very attractive and inviting.

We decided to play with the whole family, despite the box suggesting it would be best for people over the age of seven. I guess I had hoped there would be some that were easy enough for Otto to make (he does play a lot of LEGO, after all...) but there wasn't really. He got bored pretty quickly, and ended up just building things for himself out of the pieces.
I don't really doing a lot of building with our bricks, I mostly leave that up to the boys - and I must confess, I found this game quite hard, too! The 'easy' cards had quite abstract/difficult things to build and I struggled to make them look like more than, well, blocks!
Aesop, the most practised builder among us, struggled a bit too. He struggled with building things far too big and detailed. One of his creations took 15 minutes! This means the game has the potential to take a long time, and it was quite boring in the meantime.
Abraham, on the other hand, aced it. He was able to build small and basic things, that actually seemed to have just enough detail to show what they were without taking too long to create.
(Decades of LEGO use paying off, huh?)

All that said, I think, with a bit of practice we will really enjoy this game. I think it might be one that gets better the more you play it, and the more you get the hang of it. It certainly uses a fair bit of brain power. (might be my problem.. not much of that around here these days!)
It will get easier as the boys get older too, I think.

My favourite creations for the day - Ottos only real guessable attempt, and one of Aesop's- very detailled - turns. Can you guess these two?

My favourite guess was from Otto. Aesop was building a playground, and during the slide building Otto suggested that maybe it was a 'marshmellow table!'. Hehe. Love it.

 

So, all in all, this game was a challenge - in a good way. I think with a few more tries (and maybe a timer involved somehow..) we will master it! I must say also, that I think it would be great fun to play with a bunch of adults.
Creationary and a few glasses of wine, anyone?

(You can get yours - perhaps as a family Christmas present?- from the usual places, for around $69.99.)