Mau and Mea Familia

Well, the family played Mau tonight.

Actually, let me back up....

So the grandparents and the cousins left for Mexico today: Sarah will remain there permanently, with her family (my uncle, his wife, and their eight children are missionaries in Mexico), Ned will remain for Christmas Break, and the grandparents will visit for two weeks.

This afternoon at the office, in between dancing with my big brother Nate (Deej, aka Danya, was doing his DJ thing--hence the nickname Deej--and he had Rhapsody), petting Samwise the not-so-little-any-more-puppy, I actually did manage to get some work done.

I'll tell you, there are few things that I get a bigger kick out of than writing high school level DQ's for ancient Egyptian literature. If you ever wondered how Psalm 110 compares to The Prayer of King Ramesses II, I can tell you all about it and throw in a few learned comments on the couplet structure of the average Egyptian hymn. I've learned something new about literature--actually, about twelve somethings new--in the last 72 hours. This pleases me. :-)

But I get this call from Mom late in the afternoon. She wants to know what I think of the announcement posts and all subsequent posts, etc. Bizspeak. So we kicked it (Maryland slang, apologies to my friends) for awhile, and then she said, "It's just us tonight, and we're having pizza."

"Wow," I thought. "It is just us!"

Just us meaning just Dad, Mom, me, Nate (who has his own house--just--but was coming home for dinner anyway), Marj (it's her 15th birthday today!), Charity, and Deej (Danya, Davy, Blue Eyes, etc.) were alone in the house. That's right--the size 12 family has shrunk to a mere size 7 in a little matter of five hours. Pretty slick diet, if you ask me. ;-)

So Mom has never played Mau...

So we played Mau. I won't try to explain it, because you would absolutely have had to be there. But put it this way: Mau is the most legalistic card game I've ever heard of, and it acquires rules as it goes. On top of that, it's being played by a lawyer and his family. On top of that, we all quote stuff all the time (this complicates matters in Mau, believe me).

It. Was. Insane.

And sooooo much fun!