From Hobbiton to Mt. Doom

Today we struck gold.

I got a email informing me about a gal who was purging her home of 25 years' worth of homeschooling stuff.  Doors opened at 9:00 AM.  And even better - it was free to a good home.  I thought, we need to be there.

Well, we made a small but worthwhile haul.  We were there just a few minutes when Viggo came bouncing over to me, his face full of glee.  "Mom!  It's a Lord of the Rings game!" 

We found a handful of books too.  And 10 pounds of apples, 15 pounds of potatoes, and a step stool I am planning on painting red and rosemaling.  While I browsed, Viggo opened up the game and counted every single piece.  Everything was accounted for.

 We came home and Viggo and Svea pulled the LOTR game out immediately.

If you spin and land on the eye of Sauron, you lose your turn.  Bummer!

 They played for an hour, including Elin in a round, until we had a friend come over for lunch (actually, the kids' pastor at our church came over, and we had a delightful time with her!).  Viggo and Svea quickly ate lunch and rushed back to the game.

They played it from 12:15 to 3:45 this afternoon.
I played a few rounds and lost every time.
You have to get from Hobbiton to Mt. Doom and fight Sauron.  Good times!

Viggo insisted we go on amazon.com and find it.  Sure enough, there it was - for $34.  When I told the kids how much it was selling for, you might as well have told them we won the lottery.  Although I gave the lovely woman who organized the sale $10, I felt like that wasn't quite enough!  We are thankful.

 After the LOTR game-a-thon, Viggo looked at a huge Star Wars book we got there that has cross-section drawings of every major Star Wars vehicle.

 Apparently 4.5 hours of playing games wasn't enough.  Svea and Elin then played at least a dozen rounds of Uno, which was the current reigning game in our house - until 10:30 this morning.

 They kept playing and giggling.  They are so funny to listen to.

Oh, and I made Swedish kringle for dessert for the pastor.
I baked it last night and frosted it at 7:00 this morning.  Two kringle.  Kringli?

We had kringle in the morning, kringle in the noontime, kringle at suppertime.  And kringle for snacks.  It's kind of only really good for one day, so, time's a wasting, kids.  Eat up.

Yes, we have had our monthly allotment of butter today, that's for sure.  There's a whole lot of butter in kringle.

Svea asked tonight if we could play a round of Lord of the Rings instead of reading a story at bedtime.  (We didn't, but boy was she disappointed!)

After the girls went to bed tonight, guess what Viggo pulled out - the Lord of the Rings game.  He won.  Three guesses what we'll be doing tomorrow!