It’s Been A Good Week For Visitors

I have been very lucky this week!

Tuesday night, my brother Jim came to Ohio to spend a few days with us. If that wasn’t great enough, Mary Jane and her grandson, my great-nephew, Evan came over for family fun time Tuesday night as well! Now, Evan is six and full of energy and spunk and fun. He’s also way above me in just about anything that has to do with technology. I was apprehensive, but excited, to play Wii with him! He did let me know that his Wii is better because he has a large screen HD TV and I don't, but he'd try to make do with what we had.

The first thing you do the first time you play Wii is you have to make a Mii. A Mii is a little icon version of yourself to represent yourself in the game. You can customize it from the size and placement of your eyebrows to a mole on your face to what hair style and color, eye shape, nose shape, just everything! So, Evan made his Mii and actually, it looks remarkably like him. So cute!

Well, Evan and I played a quick game of Mario Brothers (my games are always quick when I’m playing Mario Brothers! I suck at it, that’s why!) Then, we bowled a game. In spite of my previous 297 game, Evan gave me a run for my money at bowling and I was lucky enough to beat him. Just by a few pins, but I beat him! It’s hard to get too excited over about winning – against a six year old!

After that, Evan and Uncle Jim were going to play some Wii. Now, Jim has never played Wii before, so Evan was going to show him how. The first thing to do is it make a Mii for Uncle Jim. With Evan at the controls, he made an Uncle Jim Mii aptly named UJ. Now, this was all Evan’s doing. He picked the features, and even chose to put a hat on UJ since Jim almost always wears a baseball cap. Cool that Evan noticed that.

Then, he got to the body shape of the Mii. There are two parts to this. How tall is your Mii and how wide is your Mii. Evan made UJ as tall as it would go. But, as far as wide goes, Evan left UJ just where the Mii was – skinny as a rail! We asked Evan if that’s really what UJ looked like and Evan very seriously said “Sure! UJ is very tall!” How awesome is that?! Through the eyes of a six year old!

I think Evan is our resident Wii expert. He kicked UJ’s butt while playing tennis. The kid has an impossible to return power serve! Then they switched to baseball.

In baseball, one person will pitch while the other bats. When you’re batting, you bat for all the players of your team coming up to the plate. When you’re pitching, you only pitch and the computer takes care of the players in the outfield.

When pitching, the pitch comes as fast as you can throw your arm. If you throw slowly, the pitch will stay in the 60s in regards to mph. Should you put some force behind that throw, your pitches will go up into the 90s! We gave UJ the basics about throwing your arm and he started the game against Evan. Evan promptly had to admonish UJ to not pitch over 86 mph as that was as fast as he could hit a ball! (and he wasn’t kidding!) If the pitch speed went over 86 mph, UJ got an earful from Evan! If it was below 86 mph, Evan swung and if it went into play, fine. If it went foul or he missed it, he took it in stride as part of the game. As long as it was thrown in his range! You should have heard him yelling respectfully at UJ to slow it down! Too funny. I should have run up and gotten my camera but I was having too much fun watching this to leave the game.

So, this was our fun Tuesday night. After dinner, Grandma and Evan packed it up and headed for Elyria and Ron, Jim and I sat around the table shooting the breeze for a few hours. It was nice to just sit and talk and catch up and laugh and giggle and bullshit for the evening.

Last night after dinner, Jim and Ron took over the Wii! The guys played all evening until Jim had to leave for Erie. When Ron came upstairs, he said his arm was a little Wii sore after all that playing! I can only imagine how Jim feels after his first night of playing!

So, we had a great time with our visitors. Now, it’s peace and quiet for the holiday weekend I think. I know I could use a little R & R.