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.
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):
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 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.
My birthday started out fairly mundane. Get up, eat breakfast, head into my closet to work. I didn't, however, have to make lunches for the girls--it being the first day of summer break.
Breaking for lunch I did my usual Ring Fit exercising. The previous day I completed the story mode for the 3rd time, "Master Mode." At the end of the 3rd completion you get the special clothing that makes you gold and gives you Ring's head.
With Ring Fit I've completed over 102 hours of exercising. That time is actual time exerting your muscles and doesn't include warm up or cool down stretching. In that time I've burned somewhere around 26,000 calories and ran the equivalent of ~156 miles.
After the 3rd time through, the game doesn't have any built-in continuation. So I'll have to figure out something to do to keep me engaged and still exercising. I've thought about wiping my save data and starting over....but I worked so hard to get here!
Once I was done with work I opened presents!
It's "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom!!!"
Dinner was at the First Street Ale House and then back home to start playing "TLoZ:TotK" for a bit while letting dinner settle. And then it was time for The Cake.
Sometime last year Heather had asked if she could help with the next birthday adventure. So as Corinne's was coming up I asked if she still wanted to help. She was very excited to plan an entire adventure for Corinne.
Heather was sick the final weekend before Corinne's birthday, so Jess and I ended up assisting with final prep work. But, in general, the entire thing was Heather's design with some consulting from me to smooth out rough spots and clarify tasks.
It all revolved around a story book which Heather wrote and assembled. The book provided the narrative and character interactions and Corinne was instructed to turn to specific pages during the adventure to continue the story.
The overall theme was a My Little Pony adventure. She helped each of the ponies with some task which provided her with clues to the encoded message Pinkie Pie found where Corinne's presents were supposed to be. Once all the clues were collected it became clear that Queen Chrysalis had ordered the presents taken. With the assembled ponies and the collected elements of harmony she was able to defeat Queen Chrysalis and recover her presents.
Reading the introduction in the story book:
Baking a cake with Pinkie Pie revealing the first 2 clues to the coded message:
Helping Fluttershy rescue stranded animals revealed the number 13 which was the next page in the adventure:
Apple Jack needed her baskets, but couldn't remember how to disable the anti-pranking alarm system. Corinne needed to retrieve them without touching the streamers and found a note with more clues.
Rarity couldn't remember the combination to her lock where she kept her notebook and Corinne needed to sew the pattern which Rarity created as a back up. Once sewn, the pattern marked the numbers 3-1-7-8.
She also needed to clear the clouds that Rainbow Dash forgot to take care of, which recovered another clue and Twilight Sparkle knew a book with helpful information in it (not shown).
Queen Chrysalis was confronted at her hive (in the backyard) and the presents were recovered from the bench.
Then it was time to open presents! At the moment she is all about Squishmallows and reading.
We went to dinner at her choice of restaurant, which was Taco Bell. And after dinner, cake!
Jess whipped up the crochet crown for her to wear to school since she didn't have anything super green to wear and wanted something.
