What I Learned, Puzzle Party 2013

This last weekend was one with most nerdy fun that I've had in a long time.  Well since last year, anyway.

Sometime last spring, a friend from church sent an e-mail to both Eli and me, asking if we would be interested in joining her team for this puzzle competition.  She thought and thought about everyone she knew who would be geeky enough to want to do it, and well, she thought of us.  The crux:  she only needed one of us.  I thought for sure that Eli would make me arm wrestle for him for it, but he let me be the one to go. 

So, one Saturday morning, we met at the student center on Auburn campus, and our team was given a packet of puzzles to solve during the course of the day.  We stayed at the student center and barely remembered to eat and go to the bathroom, we were so wrapped up in the puzzles.  At the end of the day, the scores were added up, and we came in second to last--but we had such a ton of fun.

Fast forward to October -- the organizer of the puzzle parties sent out an e-mail announcing his party for spring 2013.  I immediately e-mailed him to sign up a team.  Then, I silently recruited other middle school teachers to participate with us as the pink team. 

Saturday, April 13, 2013.  Eric's 13th Puzzle Party (EPP13) -- Your Lucky Day -- started at the thirteenth hour, lasted for thirteen hours, and teams were given 13 puzzles to solve.  I, along with four of my colleagues and one's boyfriend's little brother, travelled to the Auburn campus to participate.  On the way there, MM confided that she was nervous we wouldn't even be able to solve the first puzzle.

After rules were explained and directions given, we left were told to begin.  We were given the grid to a logic problem, but the clues were hidden all over the Haley Center.  We were in luck.  A bunch of teachers (most of whom graduated from Auburn) running around the School of Education.  We even had an inside scoop to some quiet seating areas where we could work through our puzzle.  It took an hour, but we finally solved the puzzle.  When we went to submit our answer, we saw that we were ahead of about half of the teams.  Sweet!

We retreated to MM's house where we looked as some of the puzzles.  At the end of the long night, we were able to solve six puzzles.  At the wrap-up party on Sunday, we found that we came in seventh out of thirteen teams.  We were thrilled.  And we even got the highest score on a maximization puzzle.  Heck, we'll take it.  And now I'm so ready for next year.

Some things I learned:

1.  There are code cheat sheets available, like this one.  (This one was provided by the party coordinator.  I thought it was inclusive, but that's because I didn't know.)
2.  There are codes that are not on code cheat sheets (at least, not ones I could find).  Say, for instance, pigpen cipher.  And if you have no idea what they are or where to start looking, well, it's going to take you a lot longer to solve puzzles than a team of math graduate students.
3.  In coding, a letter followed by a number usually indicates a Caesar shift. This information would have been VERRRRRY helpful for the Angel's Antiques puzzle.  Next time.  Next time.
4.  Braille dots are numbered 1-3 down the first column, and 4-6 down the second column.  I was on the right track, but had them numbered incorrectly.
5.  I learned what a Polybius Square is and how to use it. Watch out.
6.  A substitution cipher is not necessarily the same as a ROT cipher.  This was unexpected, though I'm not sure why.
7.  There are pentomino puzzle solvers that people, like math grad students, use, like this one.  Cheaters.  Okay, so I'm a sore loser about that one.  So what?  Now I know.
8.  A tare is a noxious weed.
9.  There is so much that I don't know, but I'm still pretty dang smart (even with the brain cell degeneration that has resulted from having children).
10.  Solving puzzles is much more fun when fellowship and friends are involved.

So, that was my weekend.  If this at all strikes your fancy, you should visit the website of the creator.  Eric Harshbarger is a Lego sculptor and a puzzle maniac.

Cheers.

April 2013 Debt Update

Well, I've been behind for a couple of months on the debt updates, so I figure I should just pick up where we are starting with this month.


 Third 10K Chunk, started 1/1/13

 

Fundraising Thermometer

 



I'm not gonna' lie.  For me, it feels like things are slowly unraveling as we get down to the nitty gritty.  I'm going to go ahead and complain--it's SO hard to stop spending money.  We are this close || to having our loan totals drop below $30k.  Everything will be easier once that first number becomes a 2, right?

I've also thought back to the plan to have everything paid off by the time Elsie starts kindergarten.  That's 17-ish months from now.  We have slowed down from our original momentum, so we'll need to step it up a notch.  We'll see how that goes.  Until next month..

Cheers.

Zoo & Easter (Picture Heavy)

First of all, I just want to say how much I love that we upgraded our high speed internet.  I just uploaded 25 pictures in no time (under 1 min.).  Used to be that I had to be very selective so that I didn't have to wait so long--it would take an hour to upload 10 photos.  Oi!

So, anyway, on Thursday before Easter, we went with some church friends to the Montgomery City Zoo.  And when we were there, we ran into my neighbor that I've never met.  She parked next to us, and when we got to talking as we got the kids out of the car, she had noticed one of the license plates numbers of another mom in our group (they start with county number in AL) and knew we were from Lee County.  Turns out we live one street away.  Small world.  :)  We left from the zoo and drove to Mobile to see the grandparents.  We were there all day Friday, and left squirrely in the morning on Saturday to return home for a birthday party.  

Flamingos

Hanging on the rail

Mama!  The ducks have one leg! 

Zebras!  (in the background)

What's that?

Far!

Tiger!

Group picture of friends!

Tuckered out on the way from zoo to Mobile.

Long day.

Swinging at the Spanish Fort playground.

Balance beam

Don't push me, Oscar!

Across the bridge!

On the rope bridge--what balance!

Easter Sunday

Don't touch my eggs, Daddy!

Did somebody say chicken dance?

Do something silly.

Smile!  Okay, make a silly face, then!

Egg Hunt

Do you see it?

Here it is!

And there you have it, the end of spring break.  :)

Cheers.

Hello, Spring Break!

I just looked and can't believe that it has been over a month since my last post.  While I haven't had the time to blog as much as I would ordinarily like to, I have just been recently finding satisfaction in the fact that I've kept up with this for so long.

See, I fancy myself a writer.  But, I don't have time to sit down and write with paper and pen.  I'm not a particularly good writer, but if anything, I can at least be a prolific writer, right?  And I might as well write about what I know best--my life.  You know, when I have the time.

Since I last checked in at the end of February:

• We survived the stomach bug (the norovirus) that has been an epidemic.  Elsie threw up one Saturday and was done with it.  Sadly, we missed a birthday party that she desperately wanted to attend, but I knew I had to keep her home if I wanted to be considered a good friend to the other mothers.  Ironically, everyone at the party got sick anyway from someone else at some other point, so we could have just put them out of their misery sooner by going.  C'est la vie.  Eli was at drill that weekend, so of course I was cleaning up puke solo.  Then, three days later, Tuesday night, Oscar threw up at the dinner table.  Eli was here, but I was still somehow cleaning up puke solo.  Hmm..  Eli stayed home with him Wednesday and Thursday, and he had no symptoms.  So, we had neighbors over on Thursday night and took Oscar to day care on Friday.  I hadn't been in class 15 minutes when I got a call that Oscar was throwing up.  So, I scrambled and got him and had a three-day weekend.  Thankfully, he never threw up again.  Thankfully, none of the adults got sick.  I take that back, we ended up passing the sickness to our neighbors, and they all got sick--adults and children--and had it for two weeks.  I feel pretty bad about that.

• We have been hosting/leading a small group through church at our house this spring.  This is the nth time in a row that we have done this, and every time, I am amazed at the dynamics of the groups, whether large or small.  Our group this time actually is small.  When everyone is present, there are nine adults, seven children, and two babysitters.  We have two married couples, one engaged couple, one wife (whose husband doesn't attend our group), one college student, one engaged college graduate.  It is a pretty diverse group, while still with everyone under 43 this time.  I have thoroughly enjoyed this group.  But, what I have also enjoyed is that Wednesday night before everyone comes over, the whole Beaver family is working together to clean the house for our guests.  This is probably the only time we are all working together to clean, just saying.  I kinda' look forward to the mad rush, just for the togetherness of it.  Shhh...don't tell Eli.

• Speaking of church, our new sanctuary is going up swiftly.  It has been fun to watch the progress and talk with the kids about it each morning on the way to/from school.  Oscar always says, "Look at our building!"  And Elsie always says, "It's almost done!"  Well, it's still just the steel frame with a roof, so "almost" is not quite accurate.  We have been blessed with a growing church body, and we have called an assistant pastor (whose gift is in assimilation of new members) from Massachusetts who should report for service this summer.  It's an exciting and terrifying time to be a part of this church, because it makes you look into the face of God and know that he is in control.  It's so much bigger than little old me.  I truly believe that God would move mountains, if need be.  My heart aches at the joy of knowing that this is the same God who is looking out for and LOVES this sinner, right here.

• And speaking of terrifying, we just started a new Sunday school cycle.  At our church, Sunday school classes are topical and they last for 10-12 weeks.  We are not segregated by age (except for school age children); college students and retirees alike sit next to each other and study the Word of God through the class.  There were two choices this time, and I chose to go to the class on evangelism.    Any other time in my life, I think I would have shied away from this.  Who am I kidding?--I would have sprinted in the opposite direction.  It's terrifying and fear-inducing.  I am so inadequate and so terribly content in my little world.  I'm trying something new, stepping out of my comfort zone, being called to act in some way.  I'm excited to learn how to use my own unique gifts to evangelize.  I know God will use me as I am.  But am I ready?  I think the fact that we are studying the life of David in our Sunday sermons is what has given me boldness to sit in this class--David was the smallest, most diminutive brother, but his faith was unwavering.  Perchance I could be like David.

• Finally, speaking to the title of this post, I survived the sprint to Spring Break, and I intend to survive the eight weeks afterward until the end of the year (four of them with my intern).  I'm getting things done around the house while the day care is open, and then we'll have a couple of days of spring break fun at home with the kids.  Maybe do a little travel, maybe dream about summer.  We shall see.

I know, I know.  That was full of randomness.  So, I will continue the trend and leave you with two pictures of the munchkins--since I can't both of them to stand still at the same time, there's one blurred child in each picture.  Ah, well.  These were our QTPi shirts for Pi Day (March 14, or 3.14--get it?).  Oh, and have I mentioned Elsie's latest fascination with making faces for the camera?  

Cheers.

Mardi Gras, etc.

Sorry the posts have been few and far between.  Life is life, you know?  I have blog posts in my head, but not enough time to get them all out into cyberspace.  So, I figure if I have time for one, it should be one with pictures, right?

So, the second weekend of February, we made a speedy trip to Mobile to see family and friends.  We had dinner with Jill and Scott on Saturday night while the grandparents took the kids to a Mardi Gras parade.  Then early Sunday, we woke up and drove to Pass Christian, Mississippi, to go celebrate Mardi Gras with Eli's aunt and uncle and their family, the many cousins.  There are more pictures on FB, but here's representations of the whole family.

And, if you didn't know that my oldest child is a character, we were sitting at the table tonight and I just wanted to take a picture of her with her one pony tail, and this is what I got:

And of course, Oscar and his dirty face wanted to get in on the action.

Can't believe February is almost over--one more week.  My, how time flies.  Tomorrow is the first weekend since Veteran's Day weekend in November that Eli hasn't been out of town.  It will be nice to see each other for once.  Haha.

Cheers.