In mid-April Aaron and I traveled to Niagara Falls (for the first time) to meet up with some friends at an annual board-gaming convention: The Gathering. It was still a bit cold in Niagara Falls and the weather was fairly gray, but we did venture out to see the falls, both from the American side and Canadian side. We also obviously played games and spent time with Bonney, Patrick and their 10-month old son Rowan. It’s clear the area has not fared well through the recent economic downturn – there we lots of empty store fronts and closed businesses. It was a bit sad to see the area depressed. We are hoping that some of it can be attributed to the fact that it was still the “off season” – but we did our best to invest a bit locally – with a little research we found some great restaurants and did some remarkably good eating. The above photo is of Bonney and Aaron on the Canadian side of the falls. It wasn’t raining, the falls just kicked up an incredible amount of mist. Click on their photo to see our other pictures from the trip.

Eye of the Tiger

Back in January Amy and Joe left Justin with our folks and the four of us went out for dinner and to shoot some pool like we used to do back in the day. We played both 8-ball and 9-ball in our usual teams – Amy and Aaron and Joe and I. On the digital jukebox we played Foreigner, Journey, The Doobie Brothers and of course Bon Jovi. By the end of the evening we were just about even in terms of games won, but I’m pretty sure Joe and I were the overall winners.

Aaron has started working on Justin early, shaping him into a future gamer. The above is a small album of photos of Aaron and Justin playing with the wooden blocks from a board game called Bamboleo. It’s a balancing/dexterity game that Amy and Joe have played with us before. Aaron reports that Justin is already showing a lot of potential… :)

Happy Birthday Joey! Recently we celebrated Joe’s 30th birthday. Aaron and I and Mom and Dad went in together on, you guessed it, Play Station 2 and Guitar Hero as our gift for him. We’ve even got Amy playing it now. Above is Joe practicing (while Amy and Aaron play) using Justin as his guitar. As soon as Justin figures out he controls his own hands, I’m sure we’ll get him to play too…
Click on the photo above to see some new pictures.

At a recent visit with Aaron’s family, we introduced Guitar Hero to Molly, Emily and Andrew. It must run in the family because they all loved it as much as Aaron does. Even Josh gave it a shot. Click on the image above to see the new photos I’ve added to the Guitar Hero Folder in the Gallery.

I recently bought Aaron Guitar Hero, a Play Station 2 game he had been telling me about for months. It’s a music – video game in which you use a guitar controller to “play” along with specific songs, as if you were performing at a concert. He loves it. We recently brought the game to Amy and Joe’s house, and now Joe loves it too. Aaron has just ordered a second guitar controller so the two of them can play together. The game’s not really my thing, but I do enjoy watching them play – as you can probably tell from the photos above, it’s pretty damn funny just to watch.

Nothing says summer like a good game of bocce. On Monday night we enjoyed a delicious cookout at Amy and Joe’s and a good game of bocce. We played our typical partners, Amy and Aaron versus Joe and I. Joe and I started out strong, but Aaron and Amy came back to win it. There will be a re-match…hopefully the farther along Amy gets in her pregnancy, the more off balance she will be, giving Joe and I the edge we need. :)

The first weekend in November our good friends Bonney and Patrick came east from Portland, OR to stay with us for a visit. They were in town for a small annual gaming event, Lobster Trap. The four of us spent a long weekend together playing games (board and video), catching up and relaxing. The above photo was taken late on Saturday night during a competitive game of Fusion Frenzy.