Scrabble

Today is a public holiday in France - the first of very very many in May.  It is also, as it happens, our 15th (really?) wedding anniversary.  So, it began with a lie in, continued with a leisurely morning: some veg chopping for me, some panicky flight booking in the Middle East for Mr B and some super-leisurely ipad activity for the kids.  After a middle eastern lunch (cous cous with ALL the herbs with new made-up lemon and cumin chicken) time for a games afternoon.  

First Triominos, which was one of CarbBoy's Christmas presents.  The rules have, somehow, been lost between then and now (how they were lost was a controversy we decided diplomatically to park for another day).  Obviously not having the rules is a problem for such a rule-bound family (I don't know where they get it from), but we muddled through (ie, I made up the rules, pretending to have read them on the internet).  To my surprise, I won.

Next, to make up for Mr B coming unexpectedly (to him) last in Triominos, we played Scrabble.  Now, he is a bit of a master of the art so we play in French to give him a bit of a handicap.  As you can see from his move (vu) he carries across his little words rule between languages.  The game was much interrupted by dinner and other diversions, and is yet to be finished, but I am unusually in the lead.  I don't think I have ever won a game of Scrabble in my life (not even Rude Scrabble*) so I am obviously very keen to finish.

As an interlude, an animated debate about the time value of money and compound interest.  (Oh, our kids just love us.)

Dinner was another super-flavoured chicken triumph from my birthday chicken recipe book (the lemongrass and turmeric one for when I want to remember), along with a reprise of the Giant/Yellowstone conversation, which veered into Animal Farm (which everyone watched last night when I was at a 'tupperware' party) and thence into whether America had 'worked'.  At that point things took a sharp turn into the written constitution debate that is best avoided if we are to make it to 16 years of glorious marriage... So we shall retire and watch West Side Story instead.

* We tried to describe Rude Scrabble to the kids, and ended up with "If Jack H would say it with a wink, then it would count."