Looking for a Great Midwestern Family Vacation? Gen Con Registration Opens Today!

Fun is in the eye of the beholder.

Today at noon (EST), badge registration opens for Gen Con Indy, the largest tabletop gaming convention in the United States!

We've been taking kids with us to this incredible event since Ranger was two, and this year he's old enough (9) to need his own badge.

The spectacle of cosplayers, giant games, and innovative interactive displays bewitch even toddlers. All our kids were agog at pirate musicians, belly dancers, superheros and supervillains. The kids have amassed photos with characters like the Mad Hatter, friendly dragons, the World's Tallest Leprechaun (a very talented stilt-walker), Storm Troopers, Waldo and other characters from our collective imagination.

After our first day with two-year-old Ranger at his first Gen Con, he wanted to wear a costume. Year One he kept wearing generic superhero shirt with a removable silver lamé cape. After that, he was a pint-sized Mario who kept growing. His little sister Scout soon joined in as a wee Luigi. A few years later, she became Lola, from the British children's books, and Ranger was even Lola's older brother Charlie for a day. More recently she and sister Rogue have hit the con as princesses. This year we're hoping to engineer some great game-themed costumed, but I'll save those for a later post.

The seemingly infinite opportunity for hands-on play in venues like the games library, demos in the main hall, Rio Grande room, open gaming, and Indie Games on Demand offer families opportunity to play lots of games together and with new people.

Ranger has been enjoying Paizo's Pathfinder Kids offerings. He especially loves how Scotty's Brewhouse offers a Pathfinder Tavern menu and decor. One of their Pathfinder posters was given to him by a kind manager and remains the pride of his room years later.

Gen Con has always had a great family gaming presence. Publishers like R & R Games, Out of the Box, Calliope, and Blue Orange games have long been dedicated to producing games compelling enough for adult hobbyists, but accessible enough for kids and teens. We were very excited to welcome kids' publisher HABA games in 2014.

As hobby gaming grows in popularity, game publishers like Asmodee, Paizo, Rio Grande, Fireside and Stronghold Games are offering more family offerings. Venerable franchises like Catan and Carcassonne are creating kids' editions. With these changes, Gen Con's main hall and events have more to offer families and parents who are bringing up kids in the hobby.

All these publishers producing family games means more great gaming opportunities in the main hall. We love playing giant games (like Out of the Box's Word on the Street and Calliope's Tsuro) and regular sized games in the Family Fun Pavilion of the exhibit hall.

A great game of Wassalpoag's protoype Echidna Traffic Jam

If you want a gaming getaway with the kids, Gen Con is hard to beat. Its Indianapolis location makes transportation and lodging more affordable.

Jim and I will highlight some of our favorite Gen Con offerings for families in upcoming weeks, and we'll post updates on our Gaming for Good presence at Gen Con.

But now, I need to go buy Ranger's first Gen Con badge. See you there?

Fighting Monsters: Extra Life 2014

Next weekend, Jim, Ranger and I will fight some real-world monsters in our third annual Extra-Life board game marathon for Riley Hospital for Childen who gave our Rogue a life-saving cranial surgery in 2012.

Rogue is doing great these days, and we want to help other families who are going through heavy medical concerns like injuries, illnesses and developmental needs.

Riley is a special hospital where kids and their parents are cared for together. My eyes tear up when I remember the parent cart that circulates the hospital dispensing toiletries and other small items for caregivers staying with a patient. The smallest things are monumental when you don't want to leave an infant's bedside even for a moment.

If you want to change a life with your donation, Riley Hospital for Children is a great choice. Not only are they healing kids from Indiana and the rest of the world, they also contribute important research to the global medical community.

Please consider donating to Riley Hospital during Extra Life. Even spare change, added to other's spare change, will change lives for the better.

As an added incentive, if my fundraising goal is met by Sunday, October 25th at 6PM, Jim and I will live-tweet the 1982 made-for-TV movie Mazes and Monsters over Halloween weekend. 

One randomly drawn donor with a Mazes and Monsters note attached to their donation will win our second-hand copy of the movie! I will mail the DVD to the winner or the winner's designee (offer limited to the United States; substitution of Amazon Instant Watch Credit may also be available).

Please help me reach my goal for Riley kids and their families.

How bad is Mazes and Monsters?

That bad. And yes, that's Tom Hanks. We may own the only copy of the movie he hasn't personally purchased and destroyed.

Why is he screaming?
Well, not to spoil anything, I suspect it may be the hats...

Or scenes about painting miniatures...

Share some serious joy- donate to Riley today! Don't forget to note Mazes and Monsters if you want at a chance at the DVD!

Together we can slay real monsters!

***Baby Toolkit is the epistolary adventures of some geek parents and their family.  We're Amazon associates, so if you click on any Amazon links, a small portion of their profits comes to us. We use those funds to keep the digital homefires burning. We have no relationship with whoever produced or distributed this laughably bad film. You can also find us using our big people voices at GreatBigTable.com, a podcast about board games and the communities they inspire. Thanks for reading the fine print. 

Hold the Bacon: Preventing Fridge Disasters

Before we had kids, Jim and I rarely prepared meat at home. I'm slightly squeamish about it and we both benefit from a meatless diet.

Now that we have kids, I cook with meat more often. That means packages stored in our fridge. Sometimes those packages would leak and send me into a HAZMAT response.

Who has time for that?

One dedicated Pyrex dish later, if something drips or dribbles, I can just toss the meat dish in the VERY HOT dishwasher and move on with my day. The corner of my eye twitches a little less these days.

***Baby Toolkit is the quotidian revelations of a couple geek parents somewhere in the cornbelt. We are Amazon affiliates, so if you buy stuff through our links, you're supporting our online endeavors. Thanks for reading. My apologies to any vegetarian readers. Hear our voices at GreatBigTable.com.

Hairband Carabiner 2.0: A Hack and a Hitch

I've been a Parent Hacks fan since early days. Way back in 2009, when Asha posted about storing hairbands on a carabiner, my only daughter was mostly bald, but already a rabid anti-hair accessory activist. The only efficient place for our hairbands was in the donate box.

A few years and a second girl later, I'm now corralling two sizes of ponytail holders.

A local friend reminded me of this hack. Apparently her daughter had hair in 2009. The hack worked well in holding the bands, but not in sorting them.

Without really long hair, my kids need two bands each for ponytails. Though I have unintentionally left the house wearing one neon green sneaker and one white one, my daughters are a bit more particular about things matching.

I didn't like wrestling the bands around on a scavenger hunt for identical pairs.

So, some of the bands got hitched.

Please excuse the photo quality. These are the fastest pictures I could get, not the best.

1. Do I know you? You look so familiar.

2. Hanging Out Together.

3. Twister?

4. What a cute couple!

5. Finding community.

For simplicity's sake, I keep the two sizes on separate carabiners. One ring for each kid makes morning prep simpler at home and traveling.

A second ponytail holder can be hooked into a singleton already on the ring. It's pretty easy to reunite recently rediscovered bands.

Happy hacking, friends!

***Baby Toolkit is the product of a geek marriage in the middle Midwest. We have also produced three children who cannot under any circumstances agree upon the same meal. We have a periodic podcast about board games and the groups they inspire at GreatBigTable.com. Our opinions are our own, are organically grown if you don't count the radiation from space, and are harvested irregularly at odd intervals. We are Amazon affiliates, but aren't sure about the future of that relationship. If you buy stuff through those links, we make a small percentage that we'll squander on domain names or internet connectivity. Thanks!