The Day in Numbers

I ïnvented¨a new game today.  Of course, it´s so obvious that I´m sure others came up with it before me.  And my memory is so bad that someone may have shown me this very game last week.  But for now, I take full credit for Math War.

Math War is very similar to traditional War, where two players split a deck of cards and play until one player takes all of the other player´s card.  On each turn, both players turn over a card and the highest card wins.  In Math War, you turn over two cards and the highest sum wins.  My kids have never begged so hard to add two numbers together.  And as Jeff pointed out, this game will grow with us.  We can use it for subtraction, multiplication, fractions, and more.

My success at game invention inspired me to try my hand at describing our day with numbers.  Our good friends do this every year with their Christmas letter and I´ve been wanting to try it for awhile.  Here goes…

• Number of times Zach got up in the middle of the night with stomach pains and-or diarrhea: 7
• Times his stomach felt ¨much better¨when I let him watch TV: 2
• Internet searches we conducted this morning on appendicitis when the pain had radiated to his right side: 4
• Minutes he waited for his 9 am appointment with the doctor: 1
• Dollars we paid for the visit, the diagnosis (gastroenteritis), and two prescriptions: 47
• Tara´s current assessment of socialized medicine: priceless
• Minutes Ezra did ¨school¨ while Zach was gone: 73
• Times Ezra whined that it was ¨totally unfair¨that he had to go to school while lucky Zach got to go to the doctor: 6
• Times Tara thought she might hurt Ezra: 6
• People in our van on the way to Volcan Poas: 9
• People who can take themselves to the bathroom: 6 (Abuelo Pepito, 95 years old, was in a wheelchair)
• People who were panting at the top of an 840 meter hike to a crater lake next to the volcano: 1 (guess who?)
• Times that Zach and Ezra thought it was hilarious to say, ¨The volacano is farting,¨ whenever the wind blew the sulfuric gases from the volcano our way: at least 5
• Goofy scientific theories Ezra had about how the volcano worked: 4
• Correct theories that Tara had in her arsenal with which to correct him: 0
• DK books about volcanoes that are currently being shipped to our house thanks to Amazon: 1
• People who came up and gave Jeff a hug on rim of a volcano in the middle of nowhere after unexpectedly running into him after many years: 1
• People I know to whom this kind of thing regularly happens: 1
• Guests for tonight´s Catholic ritual, the Rosario del Nino, used to close the Christmas season: 40
• Weeks late this celebration was held so that we could attend: 3
• Accordians used in tonight´s celebration: 1
• Solemn prayers during which Pepito played his maracas with fuerza: 3
• Times that people in our family have prayed the rosary before today: 0
• Times members of our family were called on to pray the Our Father prayer into a microphone when we got to that bead: 3
• Times Ezra said, ¨No Gracias,¨ before he could be convinced by the leader to pray into the microphone: 3
• Amount of fun we had singing, dancing, playing instruments, and hearing about los misterios of the birth and childhood of Jesus:  Tons

¡Feliz Navidad, Amigos!