Went to work for lack of a plan to do anything else for the day. After work, opened presents.
Then off to dinner at Uncle Yu’s at the Vineyard where Heather tried to teach Corinne how to use chopsticks.
And back home for delicious cake.
Corinne was excited that this year her birthday wasn’t on parent-teacher-conference week because it meant she’d get to spend more time with friends at school. Her school day went well and back at home she entered the land of Reveria from the Fantasy Life i which she had recently played.
Edward greeted her with urgent news: Trip, his bird friend, injured a wing while flying through the woods and needed help getting home. His path home was blocked by a golem, an orc, and some vines. She would need to practice her skills in many different “lives” in order to rescue Trip. In the game, your character takes on various lives to learn new skills (e.g., a carpenter, a wizard, a fighter, etc.).
The first task she decided to tackle was to take up the tailor life and make a dress for the golem’s doll. After cutting and sewing the dress she took up the artist life to decorate it.
The dress prepared, she took up the angler life to make a fish stew for the orc. She caught some fish in the pond and took them back to the kitchen where she took up the cook life to prepare the stew. In the game, many of the “lives” have mini games associated with their activities. So to be a cook Corinne needed to chop the fish on the cutting board (using her hand as the knife), flip the fish in the frying pan, and stir the fish in the pot–jumping from task to task as I called them out. She had a blast with this part.
With the stew ready she turned her attention to the final task: prepare a potion to pour on the vines to wither them up and allow her to pass. For this task she’d need to take up the carpenter life to build a box in which she could carry the three potions she would make with the alchemist life. The carpenter life had a similar mini game in which she needed to hammer, saw, or sand at the workbench. And as the alchemist she needed to mix up 3 potions of the appropriate colors from the available dyes.
She was now ready to head out to the forest, clear the obstacles, and rescue Trip. She gave the golem the new dress for its doll and it ambled off. She poured the potions on the vines and they withered up. And she fed the stew to the orc who settled down for a nap. She collected Trip and returned him safely to Edward who rewarded her with presents!
After dinner we were off to Panda Express for birthday dinner then back home for a shower and cake. Heather decorated the cake after Jess frosted it.
Heather’s birthday was on a Tuesday this year–a Tuesday on which her orchestra planned an all-evening event plus concert. Since her day was going to be nonstop from wake up to bedtime with only a brief break after school we celebrated on the prior Saturday.
Her birthday adventure was, echoing the game show in the movie, a KPop Demon Hunters game show!
To start, and in between each event, she needed to answer trivia questions. She got 13 out of 14 correct.
Her first set of questions:
1. What is the name of the magical barrier maintained by HUNTR/X?
The Honmoon
2. What are the names of the HUNTR/X singers?
Rumi, Mira, and Zoey
3. What is the name of HUNTR/X’s manager?
Bobby
4. Where do Mira and Zoey regularly go that Rumi refuses to join them?
The bathhouse
After the warm-up trivia questions she had her first event. The Saja Boys debut single is Soda Pop. In this game she was presented with 10 jars of soda pop and she needed to identify the 5 pairs of matching flavors.
The 5 flavors were: Coke, Vanilla Coke, Orange-cream Coke, Cherry Coke, and Root Beer (other flavors would have been more fun, but colors would kind of give it away). Corinne helped by taking notes.
She got 3 of the 5 pairs correct on her first try. With careful consideration she found the mismatch.
With the sodas identified we moved on to the next round of trivia.
5. What is the demon ruler’s name?
Gwi-Ma
6. What are the names of the Saja Boys?
Jinu, Romance, Mystery, Abby, and Baby
7. Who trained HUNTR/X?
Celine
8. How many eyes does the bird have?
Six
When the Saja Boys debuted, HUNTR/X realized they’re demons and decided to write a dis track called Takedown. Heather’s next event was to take down various foods hanging from the ceiling without using her hands.
She had to eat two Ritz crackers, a mini chocolate donut, and a full-size glazed donut. She needed to try to complete this before Derpy (played by Corinne) could eat two mini chocolate donuts.
Corinne understood the proper tactic immediately by getting the whole donut in her mouth and pulling it off the string. Heather, instead, attempted to nibble the Ritz crackers from the edges. Derpy won.
And another round of trivia, getting harder.
9. Who does HUNTR/X get the healing tonic from?
Healing Han
10. What was the name of Celine’s musical group?
Sunlight Sisters
11. Which of Rumi’s arms gets exposed to Jinu during their battle in the bathhouse?
Right
HUNTR/X plans to seal the Honmoon with their new single, Golden. But, oh no, the Saja Boys have interfered and corrupted the gold. Heather needed to identify which nugget was the real gold based on density (rather obviously not real gold, just various things wrapped in a gold-colored wrapper).
She immediately set to work measuring the weights and volumes then calculating the densities. Was successfully identified the correct nugget.
The nuggets were: a ball of aluminum foil, a ping pong ball (so mainly air), steel washers, pennies (mainly zinc), and a lead weight.
The final round of trivia:
12. What is the bird’s name?
Sussie
13. What is the cat’s name?
Derpy
14. What does “Saja” mean in English?
Lion
Her final game was inspired by the lyrics of Free and What it Sounds Like. In Free, Rumi sings, “we can’t fix it if we never face it” and in What it Sounds Like, she sings, “I broke into a million pieces.” In this event Heather needed to face something broken and fix it. The broken thing was pictures of her face and to fix it she needed to use…only her face!
She was a lot faster at it than I expected. I probably would have made them a little harder had I known how effective she’d be.
That completed our game show and our contestant won fabulous prizes in the form of wrapped presents!
This year Heather joined the ranks of the cell phone owners. One of the very few kids in her grade left to do so.
For dinner we went to the Cheesecake Factory and then back home for cake. Heather asked for a cheesecake with brownie crust which I made. I’m pretty happy with out it turned out.
On her actual birthday her orchestra put on a Spooky Strings concert with Mendenhall Middle School.
Or download here:
Jess’ birthday was on Saturday this year so she got the whole weekend to celebrate. Which she needed, because she felt super lousy starting in the afternoon and we postponed dinner and cake until Sunday.
Corinne created a treasure hunt for her which, naturally, led her to her presents. We got that done around lunch time before Jess crawled into bed for the rest of the day.
On Sunday we played a round of Garden Variety and a few rounds of Cat Fluxx (new games Jess got for her birthday).
We had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and then home for the salted-caramel cheesecake I’ve been trying to perfect. I realized this year that the recipe for a caramel topping I’d been using is not actually a caramel recipe (white sugar)–it’s a butterscotch recipe (brown sugar and butter). So I switched to an actual caramel recipe. Still working out how to get the caramel stiff enough so it doesn’t run off the sides. Next year, I’m planning to mix in powdered sugar once it cools to stiffen it up, which I did experimentally for the (poorly-piped) decorations. Also need to figure out how to keep the water in the water bath from getting into the springform pan and making the blondie crust soggy. But it still tastes really good.
I had been trying to come up with something to do for my birthday, but not finding anything exciting when Jess discovered there was a circus in town–Venardos Circus! They weren’t performing on my actual birthday, so we went to see it the day before. It was just down the street from us–couldn’t have been any more convenient. We drove over and ate lunch and then got in when they opened the doors so we could get pretty-much-perfect seats.
It was a small circus, which I think I liked better than a big production. No matter where you sat you were no more than ~30 feet from the stage so you got to see everything really up close. You could see the performers’ muscles shaking and watch the expressions on their faces showing how difficult the acts were. It felt more personal than a big production with hundreds of seats where everything is perfectly polished. I think the group perfectly embodied the concept of the traveling circus spectacle.
They had a juggler, a modern concept of a clown, acrobats, trampolines, lots of energy, and lots of fun. I highly recommend it and would be happy to go again if they come through town in the future.
The next day, I took the day off of work to enjoy my birthday. Had a lazy start to the day and did some reading. For lunch I wanted to sit somewhere quiet, so we took some sandwiches out to Brushy Peak Regional Preserve and sat at a shaded picnic table. Watched some rabbits or hares hopping around the landscape. It was nice.
There’s a rabbit in the shade under this picnic table:
After lunch we played the first scenario in Tales from the Red Dragon Inn. A game which I got for my birthday last year. I have too many campaign games waiting to be played. No buying more campaign games until I’ve played the ones I have. We were victorious (it’s intended to be a casual, light-hearted dungeon crawl, so winning should be pretty easy).
After getting the game cleaned up it was time for a surprise from the girls–my very own treasure hunt! I started by visiting the Library of Secrets and receiving a clue from the librarian. And from there I was sent all about the house until I had assembled the components of a computer and typed in the password I obtained along the way.
Completing the treasure hunt naturally unlocked my presents as the prize, which I opened next.
And from there it was dinner time. We went to BJ’s and it was decidedly disappointing. But there was a delicious cake waiting when we got back to make up for it.
After eating cake we went up the hill at Cayetano Park and watched the sun set. There was a cloud bank over the western hills, so it was a bit anti-climactic.