Chess

I don't even know how to begin to explain this photo. Let's just say it started this morning, the girl's spent last night with Mimi and Poppi so after church David and I went to pick them up. On the drive David asked me if he could teach me chess so we could play together. I'll admit my first reaction (albeit a silent reaction) was NO, I've got too much other stuff I need to do and want to do before playing chess. But before blurting that out I stopped and thought, "would it be so bad if I learned how to play chess?" David enjoys chess, it's something we could do together, and if I say yes to this, one day when I ask him to go shopping or to a chick flick he can't possibly say no because I learned how to play chess with him... OK maybe that last reason isn't the best reason but we've all done things for our loved ones that we don't really want to do. It's called compromise and balance.

So you are probably thinking what does this have to do with Maddy playing chess. Well I'll tell you. When we got home this afternoon from picking up the girl's David started looking in our closets for a chess set. He found one (oh joy, I thought to myself, I didn't think he'd find it) and he set it up on our kitchen table in anticipation of teaching me after the girl's bedtime. In the meantime Maddy comes in and gets interested in what Daddy is doing. "Daddy can I play checkers with you?", says Maddy. David responds "it's not checkers Maddy, it's chess." In my head I am thinking "this is great maybe I won't have to play now, maybe teaching Maddy will be enough", I know that sounds terrible but I have so little free time and I have lots of reading and other little projects that I want to finish before learning something new. 

David proceeds to teach Maddy chess and of course she's hooked because there is a knight and a queen involved. I listened to them "play" chess for 30 minutes. Maddy was amazing and David was a great teacher. So she now knows more about chess than I do. Guess that means I really will have to learn how to play because I try to make it a habit to always know more than Maddy. Plus like I said earlier, it's about balance. In the end David and I like to play other games together so I am sure I'll like chess too, and from the looks of it chess is going to be a family game. :-)