1. Set up the board before dinner in the middle of the island (which is almost meta…’cuz Settlers is an island…our island is our kitchen table…yep, deep).
2. We ate dinner while studying the board and discussing the different resources and chances of earning them.
3. Once we had the basic idea, we started the game by setting up our pieces. By this time, the kids were really excited to put their pieces on the board.
4. Once dinner was over and the game was ready to really play, I announced it was make-your-own sundaes night while we played.  
5. The kids LOVED it!  Dwayne and I kept catching each other’s eye, as if to say, “Are these our children?  Why is this going so well?  Three out of 3–this is unprecedented!”  

The Settlers of Catan

Catan, previously known as The Settlers of Catan or simply Settlers, is a multiplayer board game designed by Klaus Teuber, and first published in 1995 in Germany by Franckh-Kosmos Verlag as Die Siedler von Catan. Players take on the roles of settlers, each attempting to build and develop holdings while trading and acquiring resources. Players gain points as their settlements grow; the first to reach a set number of points, typically 10, wins. 

Well, that ship has sailed…without us, if I can make a weak witticism.  Of course, it’s far more complicated than that, since our adventure wasn’t a Costco-purchased, 120 day, all-inclusive cruise; the itinerary is a patchwork of different multi- and single-day tours, international and domestic flights, destination hotels and overnight accommodations that took our travel agent months and months to sew together.  It will take as long to unravel.  It is easy to amputate the first leg of the trip when airports are closed, but harder to cancel for a refund for months in the cloudy future.  We will be in Australia and New Zealand in June; both of those countries, within a few days, went from general travel restrictions to mandatory 14-day quarantines for those entering the country to, today, closing borders to non-citizens.   But no one has the crystal ball to know what next month looks like, so summer seems really beyond our understanding. 

But in the meantime, we’ll be hunkering down at home, trying not to be part of the problem…and apparently watching something called Beast Masters on Netflix.  

I came home from a walk and Kyla had left a vase of flowers in the kitchen for me!

Kyla and I were having a nice conversation when Wesley climbed on a couch so he could leap on to her back.  He was very pleased with himself.  Kyla is very tolerant.

 Sometimes this is the best shot we can get of Wes.  Kyla is beautiful regardless.

That same night, Piper got into my glasses and suddenly turned into my friend’s daughter, A. Uncanny resemblance, and cute regardless.

Yes, he deliberately wanted THIS picture taken.

Wes, dear, dear Wes (aka “I’m Why Mama Can’t Have Nice Things”) may have a reputation for breaking things.  I’m not saying it’s not well-deserved; but occasionally something breaks that’s not his fault, even if at first all evidence points to the Usual Suspect.  

I’m not one to complain about doing laundry–other than physically putting clothes and soap into the machine and turning it on, there’s really very little work to it except remembering to ask the kids to put the clothes in the dryer for me and reminding them to sort and put away their own clothes before bedtime.  This time, Wes was closest when I remembered that the Piper’s bedding had to go in the dryer.  He cheerfully did as I asked and I forgot about it for another few hours.  

When I went to get the laundry out, the blankets and sheets were soaked. As in dripping with pounds of extra water.  I looked at the washing machine, realized that the load had become unbalanced and stopped during the cycle, and Wes had taken items he could barely lift out and into the dryer without mentioning the unusual weight.  As I put the items back in the washing machine, my feet got wet.  So much water dripped out of the dryer that it had created a puddle on the tile floor and was already ruining the cheap baseboard in the laundry room.

Humph, Wes strikes again.  And this was worse than it first seemed.  Every time I ran the dryer, another huge puddle seeped out from the dryer.  It got to the point that I ran the dryer empty to shake all the water out and catch it immediately in the dozens of towels under the floor.  

After a few days of this, I stopped and forced myself to think differently about this.  Is there truly a never-ending source of water coming from the dryer?

Sigh. I spent so much time assuming Wes had Struck Again that I never looked at the washing machine right next to the dryer.  The one whose cold water hose was leaking behind the machine every time it ran a load, roughly correlating with the dryer usage.  

I don’t know how to play hockey, but hooky I can figure out!  The girls are going to get big, fat W’s on their report cards (for Withdrawal), regardless if they go every day this quarter or not at all.  So when Kyla asked if we could go to Seattle this week, I couldn’t think of any reason to refuse.

My dad joined us on this gorgeous day as we first did the Underground Tour. Piper and Wes were determined to hate the tour; unfortunately, the guide was funny and talked about exploding crappers and I caught them laughing.

After the excellent tour, we walked to Pike Place Market, which my kids have never seen before.  We had lunch at a German café and played cribbage while waiting for our food. My hungry kids were falling apart, but perked up with the lady brought them candy as an appetize, and the sugar helped them start appreciating the blue sky, and ferries crossing the over the sparking Sound.  

I treated myself to a bouquet and the kids to a pastry, and as we started back to the car, I finally discovered Gum Wall on Post Alley.  It is a grotesque monument to…something.  By the best of luck, I had a pack in my pocket, so the kids commenced to chewing furiously.

We’ve been dreaming about how to spend Dwayne’s eight-week sabbatical, probably before Wesley, aka Baby Omega, was born.

We had three requirements:
1) Go overseas, 
2) before Kyla was in high school (high school credits are a lot less negotiable that middle school courses), 
3) but after Wesley was old enough not to break any UNESCO sites…and not be too whiney.

After 23 years are Microsoft, Dwayne is taking a well deserved sabbatical.  To exploit a copyright, we’re taking a sabbatication!*

Dwayne has managed to turn his eight weeks into sixteen, so we are finalizing our plans of a four month Round the World adventure.  As you can see from the map, we’ll be circumnavigating the globe, while mostly staying in the Southern Hemisphere.  Not including airports, we’ll be visiting 4 continents and 12 countries.  You can see pictures and more links by exploring the interactive map we’ve made.  

We leave Seattle at the end of March and return mid-July.  Most of the details are under control, even if differing luggage requirements for ten different airlines keep me awake at night.  It’s really important to me to travel with one international-sized carry-on and backpack per person. Packing (the house and our luggage), visas, and vaccinations are in my wheelhouse, finances are Dwayne’s, and VacationKids does the really heavy lifting. 

Details are coming to a head, as I figure out that Dwayne and Wes both need light-weight puffs and I learn to live without a curling iron. Just today we were at the only place in the Pacific Northwest that has the Yellow Fever vaccination–Costco in Redmond!

At the bottom of this page is an option to subscribe to the blog updates via email, which is pretty convenient.  You can unsubscribe at any time, of course.  Join us… with glee!

PS 😷We are obviously concerned about the coronavirus outbreak. We started planning this adventure 6 months ago, and while our route skirts the most impacted areas, the situation is fluid and hard to predict months ahead of time. We are monitoring the situation and may have to make last minute adjustments as we go. Thank goodness for good travel insurance!


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*Thanks to Daniel and Talinn for a great name to steal.