GenCon

After lots of activities with the kids, we finally went on our family vacation with all of us this past weekend. We stayed pretty close to home and went to Indianapolis. The first day we went to the art museum and saw a collection of Egyptian art. Then on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we went to GenCon, a convention dedicated to games. Every kind of game and gaming-related thing imaginable was there. We liked the Board Game Library, which was a big room with lots of tables and several shelves full of games that you could check out and play. We tried out about 5 or 6 different games during our free time.

Mariana and Isaac built foam swords suitable for safely hitting each other. Mariana and I went to a workshop on how to paint miniatures, and Carolyn went with Mariana to a workshop on drawing Anime. We all went to several events put on by Tracy Hickman (He is a Mormon author well-known for writing the Dragonlance series of novels.) The highlight of the trip was probably Tracy Hickman's Killer Breakfast on Saturday morning. It was kind of a spoof of D&D, where Hickman played the Dungeon Master and people from the audience came up and acted the part of players. The players would have to explain how they got to the place in the imaginary adventure, and many of the reasons they came up with were very funny. Then Hickman would invent strange ways to "kill" off the characters. Few people lasted more than a couple of minutes, but the impromptu acting by all involved could be quite funny. One of the participants was R. A. Salvatore, another well-known fantasy author.

Many of the other people attending the convention wore elaborate costumes, some of which were quite impressive. We sometimes felt out of place in our normal clothes.

Now the vacation time is over, and Mariana and Isaac go back to school tomorrow. It has been quite a busy and eventful summer.

-- Newel