Tag: birthday

Jess' Birthday 2024

September 24, 2024 7:36 pm

When Jess returned home from dropping the girls off at school she found a mysterious, locked treasure chest on the table with a sealed envelope. Then she had to wait all day until I finished work to investigate. But in the meanwhile we went to lunch downtown at Maple Street Eatery.

At the appointed hour she opened the envelope and found a letter from a wandering soul asking for her help freeing a friend from a trap. She needed to find a lock and the key to unlock said lock. After telling the soul that she was ready to help the soul communicated to her the location of a map and riddle by flashing the lights in Morse code.

Finding the map she followed a series of riddles with each one leading to a "sigil" and the next riddle. With all the sigils she used information from the original letter to arrange the sigils on the map to point her at the location of the key. With the key was a "magic" flashlight which when shone on the map revealed the location of the lock.

Unlocking the lock released the trapped spirit friend who then flitted across the house leading her into the living room where it made the lamp change colors which matched the numbered and colored sigils to reveal the combination to the treasure chest.


I had a little fun with the home automation stuff this time. I designed and 3d-printed the key (with hidden magnet) and the lock (not a real lock, but it did have a magnetic contact sensor hidden inside) which I'm pretty pleased with.

She opened the chest and received her presents which included tickets to an American Authors concert next month (You can't get fun tickets these days, so I made my own).

I took the girls shopping a few weeks ago. We went to the outlet mall and I asked them to think of things that Mom would like and gave them a budget to work in. Heather selected a box of fancy chocolates. Corinne selected a necklace and earrings from Claire's (given that she was extremely excited about this selection and that she met the criteria I couldn't in good conscience discourage her from the idea).

Then it was off to Melo's for dinner (they have a potato-bacon pizza which Jess likes). And back home for caramel cheesecake.

Kyle's Birthday 2024

June 10, 2024 4:19 pm

We went out to the Chabot Space & Science Center on my birthday as we'd never been and it seemed interesting.

We got to sit in the actual-size Mercury capsule (smaller than I thought!), the girls made and launched paper rockets, we saw a show in the planetarium, and built a cart.

And then it was time to head to Martinez because....this year Mom & Dad were in the midst of one of their around-the-country trips and they arrived by train on my birthday.

So we picked them up from the station and drove back to Livermore to have dinner at a Chinese restaurant and then home for cake and presents. Lots of games to add to my oversized collection. Going to need to start pruning them really soon.

Corinne's 9th Birthday

March 25, 2024 12:10 pm

For Corinne's birthday this year I designed a Minecraft adventure. She's been big into Minecraft this year. Since her birthday was on a Sunday we had lots of time for the adventure. Jess took the girls to lunch at Panera while I set everything up.

I was actively involved with the adventure as it happened and I asked Jess to take video, so I don't have any pictures during the event, but you can watch the whole thing if you like (55 min):

Corinne-9th-Birthday-Minecraft-Adventure-720pDownload

When she arrived home from lunch she was welcomed to Minecraft and given an inventory bag and a map. She was told that Blockville was being threatened by an Ender Dragon because someone stole the dragon's End Crystal. She needed to follow an old legend about a lost end crystal, recover the End Crystal, and return it to the Ender Dragon to save the village.

Her first stop was to see Shelly the Shepherd in the meadow. All of her llamas got loose and needed Corinne's help to gather wood, build fences, create a pen, and then bring all the llamas back.

Once the llamas were corralled Shelly was able to tell Corinne some information about the lost End Crystal and referred her to Farmer Peregrine on the Farm.

Peregrine wanted to help, but there was a wild pig loose in his crops. He needed Corinne to mine some stone, build a trap, and trap the pig.

With the pig trapped, Peregrine was able to dig through some old family documents for some information about the crystal. He suggested Corinne visit Annie the Archaeologist who has been studying ancient relics and runes.

Annie found a locked chest and determined that the combination was related to the coordinates of a nearby statue. Corinne needed to measure the coordinates from the origin indicated on her map. In the chest was the last piece of information she needed about the End Crystal. She now had all 3 coordinates for the crystal and just needed to find the location.

In her closet she found the lost End Crystal and then activated the portal to The End. Inside was the ferocious Ender Dragon.

With an acceptable substitute for the stolen End Crystal having been returned, the village rejoiced, showered Corinne in gifts, and threw a party in her honor.

Along the way she crafted a sword/pickaxe and some diamond armor. Here she is with her new friend, the Ender Dragon:

I designed and built the llamas, pig, Ender Dragon, armor, and End Crystal. They're all made from cardboard and hot glue. The dragon includes an aluminum skeleton of 1/8"-thick flat bar running from head to tail and wing to wing. Jess painted the llamas, pig, and dragon. Some concept art of the process:

Celebrating after the adventure with presents!

If you couldn't tell by the gift selection, she's really into Minecraft right now.

The rest of the family was recovering from sickness, so we stayed home for dinner (for which Corinne chose Taco Bell). Then it was time for cake!

The following weekend Corinne had a birthday party--the first we've hosted since the pandemic. She invited a few close friends and they made name tag headbands (so your name shows up over your head, like in Minecraft), assembled Lego kits, decorated cupcakes, and painted on canvases to take home. She had a blast.

Heather's Birthday 2023

October 29, 2023 10:35 am

Heather had a recurring fever starting Friday afternoon through Saturday so we had to modify our birthday plans. Laser Tag and dinner out will have to be rescheduled but she was able to enjoy her Stardew Valley Birthday Adventure on Saturday afternoon.

October has been jam packed this year with something going on every weekend. Lambtown and a birthday party the first weekend, the eclipse the second weekend, Mom & Dad & Will (Erin was supposed to come too, but needed to stay to tend to children injured in a car accident) visiting for the Lab Open House on the third weekend, and Heather's birthday on the fourth weekend.

So the Birthday Adventure I designed this year was a little less involved, but since Heather was sick that ended up working well. It was Stardew Valley themed this time and started with her receiving a letter like the character in the game does. The letter invited her out to the garage to plant some Moonflower seeds.

After completing her planting it was suggested she return inside to check out the community center and see if she could help fix it up. In the game the community center has been abandoned and you have to donate specific items in bundles to help restore it and when you do magical creatures called junimos fix things and give you rewards.

So Heather worked on completing 4 bundles: The Birthday Bundle, The Fall Bundle, The Family Bundle, and the Random Bundle.

The Birthday Bundle: 12 candles, 3 bows, 1 drawing of a cake
The Fall Bundle: 100 fallen leaves, 1 mug of hot apple cider, 1 pumpkin
The Family Bundle: 4 books (1 that each family member likes), 1 song played on the cello, 10 cat hairs
The Random Bundle: Write and recite a haiku about a narwhal, 4 dice showing unique numbers which sum to 12, 5 dragons

As she collected the indicated items she would unlock the room behind each bundle which contained a junimo and a piece of a code puzzle.

With all the bundles completed she was able to decode the Junimo Code and unlock the Ancient Junimo Cryptex (the code was "GEODE").

Inside the cryptex was a thank you letter from the junimos and a map of the house with the location of hidden geodes marked.

By the time she had found all the geodes she was getting a bit tired, so the length seems to have worked out well.

After completing her adventure she opened presents.

Then she went back to resting on the couch. Dinner was her choice, Stuff Stacks, and after dinner was cake: chocolate cake, vanilla cream filling, white frosting with sprinkles on top.

We opted to cut a slice off and put the candles in it since she was actively sick.

Despite being sick she had a good day.

This year, she and Liam have been attending Mathcounts with me and started alternating that with the 3-D Printing Club which meets at the same time each week. She likes dragons, reading (especially the Wings of Fire series at the moment--it's about dragons), Pokemon, playing the cello (started this school year), Minecraft, Stardew Valley, and attended her first drop-off school dance.

Jess' Birthday 2023

September 23, 2023 2:49 pm

Jess' Birthday fell on a weekday this year which means waiting until school and work are done to celebrate.

But before she could do that she needed to find a few of her presents. She made short work of my riddles and we got to opening presents and then heading out to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory (which had incredibly slow service that evening). After dinner we came back home for the triple-layer caramel cheesecake I made (blondie crust, caramel cheesecake, with salted-caramel topping). I think I've just about got it perfected.

Aside from the wildfire smoke that has settled in during this week it seemed to be a pretty good day.