Usually, I make sure the kitchen is mostly cleaned up before going to bed at night. Clean dishes are put away, dirty dishes are in the washer, and the washer is set to start during the night. So in the mornings, we can start our breakfast time with a clean slate — the sink looks like this:

One day last week, Wifegrit was out of town overnight. So that meant it was my job to get the boys ready for school in the morning. After the boys had eaten their breakfasts and made their lunches, (they make their own breakfasts and lunches, with adult supervision), the sink looked like this:

Now, I hadn’t had the time to empty the dishwasher of the clean dishes from the night before, so I couldn’t just load these into the washer. If I wanted a clean sink again, I had to do them by hand. When Wifegrit came home that afternoon, I wanted her to walk in to a neat kitchen. (It’s a minor thing, but it’s nice to not walk into a messy house.) So I did those dishes by hand. The sink was clear, and the drying rack looked like this:

Do you see that? For the boys to make and eat breakfast and make their lunch, it messed up 5 plates, 2 bowls 2 cups, a few utensils, a cutting board, and some other odds and ends. Two. Boys.

I had to run upstairs to get my backpack and make sure all the bedroom lights and fans and radios were turned off for the day. When I came back downstairs to the kitchen for one last look through, the sink looked like this:

What the hell!? Everyone was packed and ready for school. But somehow more dirty dishes magically appeared. How? I threw up my hands and quickly washed those surprise dishes.

Happily, when we walked out the door, the sink was empty and the kitchen was neat. I didn’t think to ask Wifegrit about it, but I wonder if more dishes had appeared in the sink by the time she got home that afternoon.

Bullgrit

My boys get to play Minecraft for an hour each Saturday and Sunday morning, and then we all play together for an hour of “Family Minecraft” each weekend evening, too. On our home server [in survival mode] we have a large main fort where we each have our main houses, (mine is up on a high mountain overlooking the fort), and then we have several smaller forts scattered about within a day or so of the main. (A day and night in Minecraft is 10 minutes each.) We have small farms, corrals of various animals, and of course mines underground crisscrossing all over the place. I even built a portal to the Netherworld (Hell) under my home.

During our family games, we always go on some adventure as a group. We’ve gone monster hunting — we love fighting Endermen. We’ve invaded the Netherworld — we’ve even made a small fort in Hell. We’ve gone basic exploring to find new zones and terrains. We’ve searched long and far for a village, but after weeks of looking, we hadn’t found one. (A village is like the Holy Grail to the Calfgrits.) Until Sunday night…

Sunday night we were on one of our exploration missions, with Calfgrit8 leading us to an interesting area of mountains he had found near one of his personal forts. We ended up traveling overnight and got into a serious battle with several monsters, including two Endermen. In the melee, I and Calfgrit12 died and had to respawn back at our homes. In making our ways back to our gathering spot, we got a little separated. Calfgrit12 went in a different direction while I caught up with Calfgrit8.

When we’re playing our family Minecraft games, we have our home telephones set up as an intercom so we can talk to each other. I’m in on my computer in my office, Calfgrit8 is on an old computer set up in the upstairs loft, and Calfgrit12 is on their mother’s computer downstairs.

As CG12 was exploring his wrong direction on his own, he suddenly started shouting, “I FOUND A VILLAGE! I FOUND A VILLAGE!” CG8 ran downstairs to see what his big brother was seeing on his computer screen, and then he got all excited, as well. Through all the excited shouting, we figured out where he was, and we all converged on that area.

Minecraft Villagers

Sure enough, there was a village in the desert, with 7 or 8 buildings and many villagers milling about. The Minecraft sun was on its way down to the horizon, and we all knew that the first night after you discover a village, there is a zombie attack. And when zombies kill a villager, the villager is not only dead, but turns into a zombie, also. Night in Minecraft is hard enough because that’s when monsters spawn anywhere it’s dark. (Zombies, skeletons with bows and arrows, giant spiders, creepers that explode when they get near you.) We had less than 5 minutes to start up some kind of defense plan for the village before the sun disappeared and darkness brought out the dangers.

Minecraft creepers coming at night

We called out our plans to each other, and everyone got to work. CG8 had a lot of cobblestone blocks with him, so he immediately started building a wall around the village. I had a lot of torches with me, so I started placing them around the buildings to prevent monsters spawning too close. And CG12 started running around the village taking stock of what was there and how it was arranged in the terrain. When night came, and the first monsters started approaching out the darkness, the wall was only about a quarter or a third way around the village.

The wall started around the village

We ran around the village, calling out monster contacts to each other, fighting with swords and bows, defending each other and villagers, and trying to extend the walls. This was the most exciting and fun game session of Minecraft I have ever had. We all worked great as a team. We shot down creepers with our arrows before they could get close enough to explode, we hacked away zombies that got inside our perimeter, we double-teamed spiders that climbed our wall, we avoided antagonizing Endermen, and by the time the sun came up again, we had successfully defended the village. One creeper had managed to sneak up on us and blew up one wall of one building, but otherwise there was no real damage and no casualties among us or the villagers.

By that time, our normal hour of family Minecraft was expended, but I told the boys that we’d play through one more day and night before logging off. That meant we had to mine the local terrain for materials to finish the wall during the day. By the time the next night time came, we had the whole village surrounded by a protective barrier (mostly made of piled sand — the village is in a desert region), well lit with plenty of torches, and we stood atop and patrolled along the wall. That second night was easy with the wall completed. We had prevailed and conquered. We owned that village.

The village seen from the temple tower

When we all logged off the server, all three of us were running high on the adrenaline and excitement of the game. Being this was a weekend that Wifegrit worked, she was on her way home as I was herding the boys into their showers and beds. I called her and warned her she might not want to come home right then. If the boys heard her come in the house, they’d immediately jump up and run to tell her about the Minecraft village defense. I’d never get them to lay down. So she went to the grocery store and came home only after they had fallen asleep. So it was only me who excitedly regaled her with the tales of our Minecraft adventure.

Honestly, that 1.5 hours of Minecraft with my boys was one of the most fun gaming experiences I’ve every had. We can’t wait till this weekend so we can go back to the village and expand on it.

Imaginary things have such real meaning to kids.

Playing Minecraft, Calfgrit8 gave Calfgrit12 a diamond sword. A diamond sword is made by crafting three diamonds with one stick of wood. Now, diamonds are not easy to find in Minecraft, but I can get a couple or so just about every time I mine deep — which is pretty much every time I play for an hour. We each have several diamonds saved up. I could make probably six diamond swords right now, but I don’t really need anything better than iron.

Anyway, so CG8 gave his big brother an imaginary item in an online game. Big brother hung the item on a wall in his imaginary house in the online game. A little while later, CG8 had giver’s remorse, and wanted the item back. Well, actually, he wanted stuff in exchange for the diamond sword. CG12 argued that it was a gift, not an exchange. But what CG8 wanted for the sword was stuff so easy to collect, bones and seeds — stuff you can accumulate accidentally in 30 minutes of playing. Even so, CG12 argued that he shouldn’t have to give anything in exchange for a “gift.”

So CG8 went to his brother’s imaginary house in the game, and took the sword off the wall and back to his own house. And all hell broke loose in our real home.

“You stole my diamond sword!” CG12 shouted.

“No, you stole it from me!” CG8 shouted.

“You gave it to me!”

“I wanted to trade!”

Now it should be noted that Calfgrit8 plays on the computer upstairs, and Calfgrit12 plays on the computer downstairs. So the shouted argument was loud enough for them to harangue each other 30 feet apart, around walls, and up/down a stairway. I let it go on for a couple of minutes, thinking, (read: hoping, praying), they would solve it without my needing to get involved. But it kept going. Then CG12 came upstairs, and CG8 met him at the top of the stairs, where they continued shouting and threatened physical violence on each other. I had to step in at that point.

I had to shut down the Minecraft play time to take each boy separately into another room to ask exactly what had happened and was going on. They both told me the situation, but of course with their own personal twisted perspective. At the time I stepped in, CG8 had his diamond sword. I ruled that he keep it and CG12 should just let the incident go. CG12 didn’t need the sword — he had just hung it on the wall of his imaginary house for decoration. If he actually wanted the sword, he could trade what CG8 wanted for it. But no, he decided it was the principal of the matter, and he refused to trade even the easy trash his brother was asking for.

You know, parenting is hard enough when arguments and fights break out over real world toys. But it gets absurdly difficult when the struggles are over completely imaginary things that can so easily be duplicated and replaced by just continuing to play the game they’re playing for fun.

Bullgrit

Last Friday, (Jan 4), was my oldest son’s 12th birthday. For his birthday party he wanted me to take his friends out to see The Hobbit in the theater. So Wifegrit and I planned it out:

The best show time for this was 4:00. The boys would come over to our house right after school, I would leave work at 3:00, and we’d get out the door a little after 3:30.

When I got home a little before 3:30, all eight 6th graders were in my house eating snacks — cheesy bread, nachos, pretzels, carrots. We wanted them full before the movie so I didn’t have to spend $100 on popcorn. The boys were loud and excited, but only two were really sort of over the top. When time came, Wifegrit and I herded the boys out to our vehicles. She’d take 5, (including Calfgrit12), in her van, I’d take 3 in my truck. She’d drop them off and I’d take them in for the movie, then she’d come back to help bring them home.

With the boys all loaded in the vehicles, we headed off to the theater. The three boys in my truck were getting a bit rowdy, so to distract them with a “game,” I plugged in my iPhone to the stereo system. At the first red light, I opened my music player and pulled up a song.

“Let’s see if you can identify this music,” I said.

Within the first few notes, one of the boys shouted, “The James Bond theme!” And he was right. That was probably a bit easy, especially considering there’s a James Bond movie in theaters right now.

At each red light, I chose a different song. After a few moments, another boy shouted, “‘Moby Dick’ by Led Zeppelin!” Holy crap, right again!

I pulled up another song. After a few moments, the boys were banging their feet and clapping their hands to “We Will Rock You” by Queen. They knew that song too. “Do you have ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’?” they asked.

“Of course I do,” I said. But looking through my library of songs, I discovered, much to my surprise, that I don’t have that. Wow, what a glaring hole.

I switched to another song, but they didn’t know “Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel. One of the boys requested, “Can you play more Led Zeppelin? That’s mine and my dad’s favorite group.”

I put on another Zeppelin song. We talked about how surprised I was that they knew so many classic songs. They mentioned several classic artists they knew, and as we were about to pull into the theater parking lot, I put on “Don’t Stop Believin'” by Journey. Not only did the boys recognize the song immediately, they joined me in singing along.

Just a small town girl

living in a lonely world

She took the midnight train goin’ anywhere.

These are 6th graders, 11 and 12 years old. And they know these songs from their parent’s youth.

Finally we pulled into a parking spot and all got out to join the boys unloading from Wifegrit’s van. I already had tickets, purchased the day before, and we headed in for the movie.

Bullgrit