All Together Now

It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, we take note of it. There is hope for the future.

Children, especially those of the teen-aged persuasion, often have difficulty tolerating the presence of their younger siblings. Children with completely different personalities often suffer from the same malady. As the children have aged, their ability to remain in the presence of each other has seriously declined, often to the point that dinnertime and Bible reading time are the only periods during the day where it might be possible to see them all gathered in the same room at the same time.Except ... lately, they've been gathering around the living room table playing this card game. You know the one; the cards contain little plastic ships which must be popped out of the card and put together in a kind of 3-D effect, then the ships 'sail' around, blowing each other up while transporting gold from one island to another. The 'sea' is the table top.


I never took much to the game due to the fact that there are too many of those "special" rules which must be remembered. That's probably true of most games, which is also why I'm not much into games in general. I don't like remembering rules. OK, I admit it: my memory is so bad, I can barely remember the rules for checkers. And it is certainly not high on my list of joyous things to be constantly reminded of the rules by those whose brains seem to be built for that sort of thing.

But it's nice to see the kids playing together, even though sometimes there are some rather heated discussions regarding things like ... rules. It's a mark of their maturity that they can actually see the games all the way through to the end, even when the don't necessarily agree with all the rules as they play out.

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Meanwhile, Cheryl sits over on the other couch, reading her favorite blogs and enjoying the sound of the children playing, and every once in a while, she'll start laughing about something; and then she has to bring over her laptop to show us what she's found. It's a nice bit of entertainment while the kids are playing.