virtual adventures

Vacation is essentially over. There was a brief moment when we thought we had perhaps one more day, but then Spike's phone rang this morning, and a few minutes later he was out the door and off to work. My class starts later today, and really ... I need to take the tree and everything else down if the rest of January is going to go well at all.

But yesterday, we got to end our vacation with an unexpected adventure. Right after church in the morning (which involved Spike and a little friend bursting out of a tent on the platform, and fleeing the sanctuary), we grabbed some lunch, then spent the afternoon speed bowling, rafting, flying, running and leaping over hurdles. Oh, we also did a little underwater adventuring, in which hostile fish jabbed holes in our air tight box.

Nasty fish.

That's right, we have friends who got XBox 360 Kinect for Christmas. You can do all kinds of wonderful things, simply by standing in someone's basement and making a complete fool of yourself. Afterwards, just to complete the experience, highlights of the whole thing - real and virtual - are played back for all to see.

My personal highlight ... watching Spike run in the Olympics (oddly, his avatar was a girl) while one of our littlest friends sat on the floor beside him and called encouragingly, "Go, Blonde Hair! Go Blonde Hair!"

My other personal highlight ... being snuggled by two little friends, all of us piled into one big comfy chair, while we waited our turn to play.

The day finished up with a most excellent game of Rook.

And now it's back to school, back to work, back to bills, back to regular life. Which - considering the fact that my regular life is pretty darned great - isn't bad at all.