Five

We celebrated Rian's birthday last weekend. I still can't believe that he is five already. Rian had a blast and now he has a bunch of new stuff to play with.

One of his presents was Mouse Trap, which we played today for the first time, but we didn't quite do it right. We spent a bunch of time putting together this elaborate trap, and then read in the instructions that you are supposed to build the trap gradually as the game progresses. Whoops. Rian didn't seem to care that the first half of the game had pretty much no point as a result. I'm pretty sure he could play a game where you just roll a die and move your piece around a board with no variation and no special spaces on the board and have fun for at least an hour.

The game got pretty exciting when we started trying to trap our opponents' mice, though. The trap failed two or three times before I got a chance to trap Rian and Lacey for good. I carefully inspected the trap to ensure its correct operation, then I turned the crank which rotated the gears, which caused the lever to move and push the stop sign against the shoe, which tipped the bucket holding the first metal ball which rolled down the stairs and into the pipe which lead it to hit the rod held by the hands, causing the second metal ball to fall from the top of the rod, roll down the groove, fall into and then out of the bottom of the bathtub, landing on the diving board, catapulting the diver through the air and right into the bucket, causing the cage to fall from the top of the post and trap Lacey and Rian's unsuspecting mice.

They never saw it coming.