A month or so ago, Mike bought a new game called, "Memoir 44"....it's a board game that involves strategy, little army men and tanks, cards, dice and the desire to talk about things like left flanks, recon and air superiority.

I am no discriminator of war related things...I've watched Band of Brothers 73 times and I like shooting guns. What else do ya want? But I have just not had the time nor the desire to set up my infantry units on the Memoir 44 board. However, my precious girly-girl has risen to the occasion...logging in quite a number of wins against her old man. I'll be walking through the house and all the sudden I will hear my 7 year old daughter saying things like, "I'm going to cut the wire and move in for my attack". Or, "I'll move my guys adjacent for an ambush....direct from H.Q.". My favorite: "You are getting routed, Dad!".

So tonight, I sat down with the two of them to see if I could pick up on what's going on in the dining room theater. So Abby starts explaining the game to me. She starts out by explaining something about a certain medic card, blah, blah, blah. And she says, "so Dad wiped out 3 of my men". My response to her, in my most compassionate motherly voice was, "well....that's not very nice".

She looked at me and with just a slight hint of scoffing, she replied: "Mom...it's war, OK?"