How To Make Your Family Happy and Lose Your Laptop

It was late at night. We were finally alone, huddled together on the couch. There was grunting. And moaning.

Right there! Right there!

Ooooh, that had to hurt.

Yes! It's the kind with two balls!

This was the scene in my living room over the weekend, as Gerry and I spent some quality time together.

Killing zombies.

Wait, let me back up a little.

That's what she said.  OH! I can't stop. Okay, serious face.

A (long) while back, a very, very patient, semi-angelic woman from Big Fish Games emailed me about video games. "Do you and your family like games?" she wanted to know. "Do you and your readers dig free stuff? Enjoy laughing, excitement, and/or education? Okay, so, I'm sure you like  video games, so please be specific - do you just like them, or do you like  them like them?"

Ignore the quotation marks - I may be paraphrasing, here.

I thought, Sweet! People might be interested in hearing about one of these educational games - I could let Jake play it, and get a fun giveaway for my peeps! Win, win.

Then reality happened, and proved once again that I'm doomed to be a terrible influence at best, even on those rare occasions when I try my hand at Good Parenting.

I'll spare you the details, but instead of having Jake play a game I could feel good about, something involving a math rodeo or a factory that produces animated verbs and nouns, I decided to let Kennedy pick a game. Naturally he was more interested in the arcade and action games, and out of the many choices (wisely) picked Plants vs. Zombies.

Crappy photos courtesy of my shaky hand and a lack of light.

Thus began several weeks of me doing typical Me stuff, like not being able to coordinate with my own kids well enough to orchestrate them uploading a game to a phone, then losing the unlock code, and sheepishly asking for another (which my new bestie at Big Fish Games was super cool about), then getting all distracted by Real Life, then deciding to put the game on the laptop instead of the phone and thus changing the entire plan, such as it was.

Which brings us to the part where Gerry and I were hunkered on the couch, yelling things at the screen and giggling.

Yes, Gerry can play video games AND
check Facebook on his phone. Show-off.

Well, I  was giggling, anyway. What isn't  funny about zombies wearing football uniforms and driving lawn tractors? That's what I'd like to know.

I might have had some wine.

Whatever, it was funny. Especially building our own zombie, even though Gerry wouldn't use the "I heart brains" bib. Apparently he's kind of a purist when it comes to dressing zombies, and Real zombies don't wear bibs. They do, however, rock multiple other accessories.

Hey zombie, remember that time
you were in the Beatles? That was awesome.

Gerry probably doesn't want you to know this, but he stayed up until about 2 AM playing that crazy game. He's a man obsessed. Must. Unlock. All. The. Mini games. Braaaiiiiins.

The next morning, like the Mom Of the Year that I am, I encouraged Jake to start killing zombies at 7:30 AM. He loved it too, and the downside is that, between the two of them, I'm never going to get to use the laptop again.



Yes, that silver thing on the table is used to measure
shots of booze. No, I didn't bother to move it for this picture and
no, I wasn't letting Jake get liquored up.
Maddie was eating pretzel sticks out of it.
Naturally.

All was not lost for poor Kennedy - although we couldn't get the game on his phone (through no fault of Big Fish - I'm just too dumb) he did discover that you can play a trial of almost any of Big Fish's zillion games for FREE for an hour before you buy it, so you never end up paying for something that you later find out sucks big time.

He got quite a bit of mileage out of that feature.

All is not lost for you guys, either, because two of you can get a free game, too! Just peek at Big Fish Games' website, and comment below with the name of a game that looks like fun. They have tons to choose from, from puzzles to adventure, and games for all age levels. I'll pick two lucky readers at random from the comments on Monday and set you up with an unlock code, courtesy of the fine folks at Big Fish Games.

And no, they didn't pay me to say Big Fish Games a kajillion times, it just happened that way. I was  compensated for this post, though. Nevertheless, all opinions remain, as ever, my own, including my opinions about global warming, pumpkin pie, and people who chew toothpicks, though we can no doubt agree that some of my opinions are, for the sake of this post anyway, completely irrelevant, although I sincerely hope that you're impressed, on some level, by the number of commas I used in this sentence, and can glean that, on the subject of commas and Big Fish Games, my opinion is a decidedly positive one.

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