More prayers for Kaia

This picture was taken in July 2010 talking to Kaia at our summer church camp.  I have posted before about praying for Kaia in 2010 and 2011 .   She is scheduled for heart surgery on Monday and we are all praying for her.  We pray she will grow up to be a strong young woman to bless many with her loving heart.

UPDATE November 3:  After initially being rescheduled, Kaia finally had her surgery this past Monday.  She had a rough time the first night but is doing much better day by day.  We praise God for that.   

Thanksgiving with the Family

Yesterday afternoon and evening we had the family here for Thanksgiving.  We started off with a wonderful meal with turkey, dressing and mashed potatoes, etc.....   Janice roasted the turkey and made the gravy, Elaine did the mashed potatoes and sweet potato and dressing,  Mike brought salad and Maryanne brought cranberry sauce, and made pumpkin pie. Everything turned out perfectly.  So we were very well fed with a wonderful meal.  Chris and Maryanne were having their second turkey dinner after having a Thanksgiving dinner with his family the day before.   And we have quite a bit left from a large turkey so we will be having it in various ways for a while.   

During and after cleanup we watched the football game, moving to our new TV downstairs for the second half.   It was a good game with another Rider win played in Toronto.  The Riders outplayed Toronto on the field, and the fans in Rider green dominated the stands.  The cheering sounded like a Rider home game.  By that time our dinner was settled enough we were ready for the pumpkin pie.

In the evening Mike showed us his pictures of a recent trip to Chicago.  Then we played a board game called Power Grid that the family gave me for  my birthday but had not had a chance to play yet.  This is an economic strategy board game that I had not heard of before but is highly rated by board game experts. On the website Board Game Geek it is ranked number 6 in a data base of over 60,000 board games.  The game is played in 5 phases for each round of the game. 1. Determine player order (changes for each round); 2. Auction power plants (decide if to pass or bid more than opponent); 3.  Buy fuel for your power plants (fuel prices go up as lower priced fuel sold out); 4. Build houses and pay building and interconnection costs in the network; and 5. Receive payment for number of house supplied with power.   The first time though it took us quite a while referring back to the rules to get the procedures and learn how to balance costs and revenue.  The board is shown below using the US  map (1 of 4 alternate maps including Quebec, Germany, Europe.)    

After about 2.5 to 3 hours in the evening we had to quit for the night  since some had to go to work the next day (not like us retired folks who stay up late.)  The picture is how the board looked by the time we ended for the night. We recorded where we were to continue again another day.  It should go easier when we continue since we are starting to know the game rule better.

All in all it a was perfect day with the family.