Hide-and-go-Seek-Death-Match

It was a pretty normal weekend in the Calvin household... nothing major to report. Saturday Dawn spent the day up in Portland, representing the family at a temple sealing. That left me at home with the kids... 3 kids and a Calvin, all left at home by ourselves.. this can't be good.

But the day turned out to be fairly normal: morning buttermilk pancakes and cartoons... the kids playing in their rooms. Then we began almost if by accident to play a favorite game in the Calvin household... Hide-and-go-Seek-Death-Match. Now what is THIS game, you ask? Allow me to explain the way this works. One person is "it". That person is typically me, both because I am the world champion of Hide-and-go-Seek-Death-Match and because I am the scariest (will make sense later). Anyway, I hide somewhere in the house and it is the kids job, either collectively or individually to find me. I have discovered the best spot too: Go to the kids bathroom, turn out the lights, pull the shower curtain back, but only half way. This way the kids THINK you are not there and quickly move on. Sounds like traditional Hide-and-go-Seek, but then comes the fun part. Here come the kids, quietly creeping down the hall, weapons in hand (you must have weapons for Hide-and-go-Seek-Death-Match, toy lightsabers or pirate swords are the norm), peering in each room, trying to find you. But unlike traditional Hide-and-go-Seek, rather than just saying "fine you found me"... I jump out, screaming at the top of my lungs and making gurgling sounds as if my heart is being ripped from my chest. This causes the kids to turn tail and run screaming in terror back down the hall, having the snot scared out of them. (Quite literally too, just ask Tyler..), By the time the little mob gets down the hall and around to the kitchen, they are laughing so hard they can hardly stand up, giving me ample opportunity to slip around another corner and hide again, before they realize I just slipped away. About 10 rounds of this and we are all just exhausted. This tends to be a fairly...eh... noisy, destructive game, so it's best played when "Mom" is not home, and oblivious as to what we are really doing.

I also learned another very entertaining game... "Maximum Overdrive", inspired by the old 80's Emelio Estevez movie. In this game, I position my self very carefully where the kids cannot see me, but I can see them. And there I stay with an RC car remote in hand, and proceed to chase the kids around the house with the RC car seeming to them to be driven invisibly and it has a vendetta against them. Also, another game best played in Mom's absence.

But soon enough we switched gears to more... eh... conventional entertainment: A family bike ride, stories in Little Calvin's Star Wars cave (see photo)and a movie night watching "Dreamer", a movie that Amanda especially loved.

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Top lines uttered by Little Calvin, age 5, over the weekend:

"Ahhhhh, I wish you guys were married" -Spoken to Dawn and I, as we looked puzzled at each other.

"Dad, you know that I am smarter than you and Mom" -Proclaimed to me out of the blue while driving to the store.

"Ok Bunny.. Prepare to DIE!!!" -Yelled loudly while walking though the store, having just received his free cookie from the bakery in the shape of a rabbit.