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Re: Last Guest Gone - I'm Pooped 

By: oldCADuser in FFFT | Recommend this post (3)
Sat, 28 Dec 13 9:35 AM | 52 view(s)
Boardmark this board | Food For Further Thought 		Msg. 59444 of 65535
(This msg. is a reply to 59414 by oldCADuser)
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Well, our oldest and his family left this morning for home (in Texas). We went to the California Science Center yesterday to see the Space Shuttle Endeavour. It's currently in a temporary building sitting in its 'landing' position but the plan is to eventually erect an exhibit where it will be displayed vertically attached to a propellant tank and the side-mounted solid booster rockets along with a gantry where visitors will be able to see the shuttle from several different levels. At the moment you can walk all around and under it but it's too high up to actually touch.

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Afterwards we went to Chinatown for dinner and then walked around looking in the shops and buying some little items for the kids.

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One thing I did manage to do while they were here was to give the first chess lessons to our 8 year old granddaughter. I taught her checkers a few years ago and she's gotten pretty good at it now. And she taught me how to win at 'Battleships' so I figured it was about time that she was introduced to chess. We only had time for a few games so I spent the first two showing her the basic moves and pointing out the rules as we went along, correctly poor moves on her part and showing how alternate moves would result in different actions. By the third game she knew all the moves for the different pieces and was starting to learn how to defend her King and the way that Knights and Bishops could attack other pieces. I suspect that if we would have had another hour or so she might have started to really understand strategy and how to use multiple pieces together to force an outcome as well as gain a better understanding of exchanges and how to use them to weaken your opponent.

Anyway, I gave her a cheap chess set I had laying around the house and told her that her father at least used to know how to play and that he should brush-up himself and keep her practicing for the next time I see them. She's a bit young to find a chess club (if they still have those in schools) since she's just in the 3rd grade, but who knows...




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Re: Last Guest Gone - I'm Pooped
By: oldCADuser in FFFT
Thu, 26 Dec 13 10:40 PM 		Msg. 59414 of 65535

We had a great Christmas. As you know we have 3 sons, two living close by and the oldest one with the four girls, living in Texas. Anyway, as I stated earlier we had plans for Christmas dinner for 11 people but at the last minute that number jumped to 17. You see our oldest and his wife and the girls they suddenly showed up at our front door about an hour before dinner was going on the table. He had been given the whole week off and they decided, without telling us, that they were going to drive to SoCal (his wife's mother and sister lives in Palm Springs) and surprise us. He called his brothers and they knew they were coming and was responsible for making sure that we all would be here when they arrived and so it was a total surprise when the doorbell rang and we were wondered who could possibly be at our door on Christmas day.

Anyway, it was a great day as this was the first time that all of our family had been together for Christmas in over 10 years.

So today the plan is to go up to LA to the Science Center to see the Space Shuttle and to have another family get together to remember, then it's back to OC for dinner to celebrate a couple of near miss Christmas-birthdays before the oldest and his family starts back to Texas on Friday as he has to be in the office on Monday morning.

This will be a Christmas to remember all right. The only negative in the whole thing was that the girls felt sort of left out with respect to our gifts to them since we had mailed everything to Texas by priority mail guaranteed to be delivered on Saturday the 21st (and the USPS tracker says that it was) but they were already on the road so I guess their neighbor is taking care of their mail. And of course, since they showed-up on Christmas day my wife didn't have an opportunity suddenly rush out and buy something for them but at least our other two sons, since they knew about this, had gotten the girls some iTunes cards so they each had a couple of things to open.

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