I've been listening to Jane McGonigal's new book Reality Is Broken and she talks about an augmented reality game called Chore Wars.  It's an online game that allows you to set up a party of people in your household and create adventures for them to go on.  Each of the Adventures is a chore from around the house that you can assign experience, gold and treasure to and can be claimed by the party member who completes it.

I thought this sounded like a good way to get me doing stuff around the house more consistently and also helping my wife feel rewarded for all of the things she's doing.  What I didn't expect was how much she liked the idea, but even more so how much my son is excited by it.  I told him about it before I had everything setup properly and he's been asking me constantly when we can get started.  I got things setup yesterday evening and he immediately rushed to brush his teeth, clean his room and make his bed so he could get claim these adventures.

As each party member gets XP we level up and gain attributes for the types of chores we do.  For instance, taking out the trash often gets you a plus to your Strength and if you ignore Intelligence chores like paying bills you can lose from that stat.  We are still working out how we want to handle real world rewards, but have decided that my son can turn in gold to buy toys and video games.  I like this idea much better than a simple allowance.  I have a feeling that my wife and I will turn in gold for things like back rubs and getting dinner out instead of cooking.

I'm sure there will be much more to say after we've tried this out for a while, but we are all pretty excited about it right now.

Well, we didn't get the two feet of snow originally predicted but there's several inches out there.  The worst part is that it's on top of a few inches of solid ice that came yesterday.  The BEST part is that Volition is closed today and my son is out of school so we get to have a fun day at home.

We may put some time into Fable 3 today but I definitely want to do some family board gaming as well.  Maybe we'll finally try out the Lord of the Rings board game that we've been anxious to try.  I also noticed that Groundhog Day is on Netflix streaming so we may watch that today as well :)

In anticipation of being snowed in, I brought my kit home so I can play through more of Red Faction Armageddon and try to track down some last minute issues and adjustments that I want to be sure get address.  It's always fun to see Kian play a game I'm working on as well.

Kian has been showing an increased interest in football and asking to get a new one.  So, we went to Target today to find something that was better than the tiny football he has been playing with since he was 3.

One of the things he struggles with at this age is fighting the urge to flinch away from the ball and not aggressively try to catch it.  I wanted to get something soft enough to show him it won't hurt when he catches it and help build his confidence.  We found the perfect thing today...The Franklin Future Champs mini football and receiver gloves. Strangely I can't find it anywhere on the internet to post a link, but it's a normal small football except that the tips are soft and make it safer to catch.

The gloves are way too big for Kian's hands but it turns out he didn't need them anyway.  He loves the new football and is already doing a great job catching most of what I throw to him (as long as I keep it around his chest).  Also, I'm able to throw normally instead of lobbing it underhanded to him.

My dad came into town last night so we could play a round of golf on Sunday morning.  We talked about it once he got here and decided to take Kian with us :)  Kian and I had received free golf vouchers from when he had his lessons earlier this year, so we headed back to Legends where he would be more comfortable playing.
Things went really well and Kian had a blast playing.  We developed a method of my dad and I teeing off at the back tee box then driving Kian up to the front tee box.  He then took as many swings as he needed to get up to where we hit our first shots and we proceeded from there.  Legends is a par 3 course so things went really smoothly and Kian didn't get frustrated at all.
At one point, Kian decided to start doing his "fancy setup" before a swing.  This meant shaking his butt at me before swinging the club.
I even let Kian drive the golf cart for the first time!  I handled the pedals while he took the wheel.
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Kian loves sports just like I did when I was young, so i'm having him try lots of things to see which ones he enjoys most.  Soccer and T-ball have been the top sports so far but he started showing interest in golf over the last few months and asking if he could come with me when I went to play.

After doing some research, I bought him a set of Accu-Length clubs because they can be lengthened as he grows.  This allowed me to spend money on clubs once and get 2-4 years out of them even with a rapidly growing boy.  He also got a big kick out of the Sponge Bob golf balls that I got for him :)
I began working with him in the back yard but quickly realized that I wasn't sure how to teach a beginner like him.  Since getting started on the right foot is so important, I was happy to hear about the week of intro lessons at Legends of Champaign. They did a really good job of teaching them the basics and being very patient with them.
Each day ended with them playing some holes of golf and on the last day the entire 1.5 hours was spent on the course.  I had a blast driving the cart around with Kian and another boy and seeing how much fun they had as well as how well he did.