#i can easily buy another one but gahhhh

[yerimacoustic]

NO BC WDYM??? i lost my suho smini ????

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OH MANNNN I’m really craving buying White Knight Chronicles now! Even though i’d need to buy a whole PS3 for it! Seriously its like one of the VERY FEW ps3 games that doesnt have a port to any other system, gahhhh And seriously why am I getting this craving to finally buy one after YEARS of not thinking it was worth it And seriously why is it ONE MONTH before trails of cold steel is about to get its port to another system?? That was the only other game i couldnt play on another console! I was like ‘if there’s TWO games I want, then I’ll buy the console’. If only I’d heard of this game earlier this year! I mean TECHNICALLY there’s still two games I want, but only for like 38 days! Should I get a PS3 and the original version of cold steel, or are the differences in the PC port gonna be worth going for that one? Cos seriously also having to play with keyboard and stuff is also another penalty to this PC version. I think Trails In The Sky was meant to be played on pc but cold steel seems to be more action based? I wanna use a controller and i dont have one of those pc connection lead things. And just GAHHH I’m watching a whole LP that constantly keeps talking about how bad White Knight Chronicles is and how much wasted potential it has, and its SOMEHOW MAKING ME WANT TO PLAY THE GAME??? Like I can completely agree that the plot is garbage and the gameplay has flaws but YOU CAN MAKE A REALLY DETAILED CUSTOM CHARACTER seriously why why am i so weak to this I literally bought Dragon’s Dogma and made my custom character and got bored in one hour and put the game down Don’t regret that purchase I literally bought Bloodborne and made my custom character and got bored in one hour and put the game down REALLY don’t regret that purchase, cos that character creator ate up ten hours of gameplay, lol! I think I woulda done the same with dragon’s dogma if the character creator was easier to use. it has a dumb thing of making you play a 20 minute prologue mission as a preset charrie before you even get to the character creator, so i couldnt easily reset it and try again :( BUT SERIOUSLY AAAA this game looks like ALL THAT but also its in a more cartoony anime style! And it has lots of GRAMPS POTENTIAL There is specifically GRAMPS POTENTIAL you can make A GRAMPS!

A GRAMPS!

[jeffdonaldsons]

Our Family Trip to France

We just got back for the best trip to France and I wanted to write every bit of it down!

Backstory: For Christmas we had the intention of surprising our girls on a trip. We decided that we were done with buying a bunch of crap that they didn’t care about 3 days later and instead we would do something different. In June I saw a great flight deal for round trip tickets to Paris for $450 round trip. Did you notice I said intention?…Dylan was reading a group text message on my mom’s phone and read about the trip. DANG IT!

So it wasn’t a surprise, and it made for a little bit of a lackluster Christmas morning, buuuut we are 100% doing this from now on, I’m just going to be way more stealthy about it.

Ok so let’s talk about France!!

Why France?

We’ve done very little international travel and zero with our kids, so for our first adventure I thought it would be a good idea to do something that we were semi-familiar with. Court and I went to Paris about 7 years ago (OMG we were so young and skinny in those pictures!) so we knew what the language barrier would be like, we knew that we could get around easily, and we felt comfortable taking our girls there. I think our next adventure will be somewhere totally new, but for the first one France seemed like a safe idea!

3 days in Normandy

I think because we had already experienced Paris, I had my heart set on visiting another part of France for part of the time. Oh my heck I am SO GLAD WE DID!! This part of our trip was the best!

I went back and forth trying to decided if we wanted to stay in the country or in a town. Trying to decide on a place to stay is one of my worst qualities. In every other portion of my life I can make quick and decisive decisions with no lamenting. But omg trying to decide on a place to stay is THE WORST. I have combed through every listing on VRBO and AirBNB. The plan was to stay in a cool barn conversion or house in the country. After finally pulling the trigger, the host let me know that the barn wasn’t available. Suck. Then it happened twice more! GAHHHH! So after my first 3 VRBO selections came back with a no, we decided maybe the country wasn’t meant to be, so we booked this fisherman’s house in a city called Honfleur.

We rented a car (from Europcar, pick up was very easy) and it was the best decision that we made the entire trip. We drove all over the western side of France and I don’t think we will ever travel another way again. It was perfect. 

The reason we loved having a rental car is because we could go anywhere and explore. There were handfuls of tiny villages that we drove through, each more quaint than the last. A lot of the towns have these big signs off on the side of the road showing something noteworthy, so if we saw something interesting, we would put it into our map and go see it. Favorite part of the whole trip was driving around discovering things off the beaten path. 

Here’s a run down of our main stops and a few thoughts about each!

Giverny

Home of Claude Monet. Incredible gardens, loads of people. Absolutely worth the stop!

Honfleur

Lots of recommendations for Honefleur, it was a very charming seaside town, but we didn’t love it as much as some of the other places. It would’ve been a great place to visit for the day, but I wouldn’t stay there again. 

One of the reasons I decided to stay in Honfleur vs in the country was the convenience of having restaurants around. Unfortunately the fam was not a fan of french food, so we didn’t use them anyways. It would’ve been better to head to a grocery store, stay in the country, eat PB&J’s and save a ton of money.

Omaha Beach

YES x10000. Omaha Beach is one of the beaches that the United States landed on on D-Day. They’ve got a massive cemetery for all of the US soldiers that died in France in WW2, and an incredible memorial. We got there at 5:00 when they were retiring the flag and it was a very emotional and awesome thing to experience.

We also went down onto the beach and into some of the German bunkers. Definite must do!

Chateau de Fontaine-Henry

I was so bummed that this chateau wasn’t open for tours yet (they start after Easter so we missed it by a week!) This was a roadside sign discovery and has been in the same family for 800 years! Can you even imagine?!

Mont Saint Michel

We had some friends recommend Mont Saint Michel and I am SO GLAD we went. Holy cow, it was mind blowing!! There were a ton of people, but even so it was one of the coolest things that we saw. Definite must see!

Jumieges Abbey

My favorite stop of the entire trip was Jumieges Abbey. It was built in the 600’s and has seen everything from Viking attacks to the French Revolution. It was even dismantled and sold for building scrap, but in the late 1800’s was rescued and preserved. We were almost completely alone, and it felt like such a secret treasure. I absolutely loved it!!

Martainville Chateau

This was another roadside sign discovery that was worth the stop. The whole chateau has been converted into a museum and it was really cool to see furniture and clothing in their semi natural habitat. The one downside for me (this is going to sound annoying) the electronic guide was great, but the descriptions were so long. Like 30 minutes in each room. My girls were over it really quickly, though they liked walking around and seeing everything.

Staying in Paris a few years ago gave us a point of reference and we knew what we wanted to take the girls to see and what we wanted to skip. We stayed in an awesome VRBO (you can find it here) and were right by the Eiffel tower. The hosts were 5 star, definitely would stay there again!

Eiffel Tower

Of course yes. The girls loved it!

Catacombs

We loved the Catacombs last time and thought that the girls would love them too. We got caught behind a guided tour and I wish so badly that we could’ve joined in, so note to self, get more info on that!!

Notre Dame

We were in Normandy when the fire at Notre Dame broke out, so we missed a lot of the excitement, but when we made it into Paris we went to visit. That whole section of the island was blocked off, so we could only see it from the other side of the Seine river and there were SO MANY PEOPLE. Still worth it, and I’m pretty sure I saw Court tearing up, though he’ll never admit to it.

 Invalides Museum

Court and I loved this military museum, the girls not so much. This was a highlight from our last trip.

Louve 

We didn’t spend as much time as anyone wanted here, if we would’ve had another day we would’ve gone back. This was Ivie’s favorite stop, and I got some insop for the wood floors in Phase 2 of the Merc!

 I love to travel, but man alive there is nothing like being home! Have any questions? Leave them in the comments below And have you ever travelled internationally with your kids? What is the best place you’ve been?

  The post Our Family Trip to France appeared first on Vintage Revivals.

via Mandi at Our Family Trip to France via Jeff Donaldson’s Blog Our Family Trip to France

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I WILL COMPLETE THIS FUCKING GAME AAAAAAA

“Oxygen Not Included” is the most goddamn accurate name ever GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I know its still in beta but seriously its SO IMPOSSIBLY HARD FRUSTRATINGLY SO Yet I keep on coming back to it, aaaaa goddddd Its a space station building sim but its SO HARD and its SO CUTE and i feel SO BAD EVERYONE IS DYING its like you spend the entire damn game in a state of starvation of one resource or another?? and you never get to rest and its really stressful. And every time you solve a problem another one happens cos another resource has run out which means you need to dig deeper. But then it starts revealing extra bullshit that punishes you for digging deeper so you need to build more stuff and need more resources to run that stuff and then you suddenly have to learn about plumbing physics and gas diffusion and GAHHHH I finally finally FINALLY managed to detoxify my oxygen in my fucking huge base, there was like 500 tiles worth of poison and i got rid of it all and was only just able to realise how much damn carbon dioxide I had. And then there was a shortage of algae so i needed to start converting slime but then I ran out of water but the slime creates water which is good but it was TOO SLOW so we all starved. Cos we had no water to make the astronaut food stuff and all our crops had died because of the toxicity and cos it left behind carbon dioxide which we werent able to get rid of without water it was ALL SO FUCKD UPPP And it just ate up my entire day cos it plays sooooo sloww and its so stressful and i always feel like I’m suffocating if I play too much cos i hold my breath from like.. sheer sympathy. It genuinely scares me?? its not remotely a horror game, its just a very cute resource management sim in space, but the concept of managing oxygen scares me subconciously somehow even though its not even presented in a scary way. Same thing happened playing Don’t Starve, except I was even more bad at that and I didnt enjoy it, whereas I do at least kinda find it possible to play this and someone feasable I might win eventually?? So I DO NOT KNOW why I keep playing this, except for an idea I could maybe win if I try one more time. Again, same as Don’t Starve... I NEED TO STOP BUYING THESE GAMES AAAAAAA man now i really need to take a piss, i didnt realise i was playing for eight hours also i have a giant anxiety headache I guess this proves that all a game needs to do to win my money is Be Something I Hate or Destroy Me Mentally god i get so determined to complete things if they make me anxious, if theyre just boring I can easily quit them and never think about it again and this is the worst kind of that cos the game actually is good! I cant even say I dont enjoy it, i just enjoy it but also get super scared and sad because my brain is dumb, and super frustrated which I think even normal people would do XD GOD THIS IS LIKE BINDING OF ISAAC I played like 200 hours of that, i was just angry every time i played and barely even got happy when I finally succeeded at something yet i was just all COMPULSION TO SPITEFULLY FINISH and then they keep adding more stuff anyway and gahhhhh why am i such a bad gamerrrrr