"Physical wounds can be treated without much difficulty, but emotional wounds are not so easy to heal."

I asked Seth if he wouldn't mind writing this post, firstly because I am awful at fighting games. Its always been this way ever since I first played Street fighter 2 as a kid. I don't know what it is about them, I just find them so frustrating, I literally can't beat the boys. Secondly Seth is a HUGE Pokémon fan so it seemed like him writing it was the obvious choice. Anyway that said, over to Seth...

Hi It's Seth. I just want to start by saying I love Pokémon games. My favourite Pokémon is Dragonite because he is a dragon type and he is cute. As well as liking Dragonite I like Jiggly-puff. I wasn't sure about Pokémon at first but I tried watching Pokémon indigo league and then it all changed. I asked Pauly if I could save up for Pokémon omega ruby and he said "I have got it up stairs on my 3DS" so I sat down and started to play . That is how I got into Pokémon games. To add onto this I LOVE!!!!!! Nintendo more than any other computer gaming brand. My favourite console is the Wii U. 

One of the things I enjoyed on omega ruby was the battling so I was really excited when Pauly told me about Pokkén tournament. I was really excited as I also love a game called Marvel vs Capcom it is a super hero fighting game and Pokkén tournament is a Pokémon fighting game were I can use some of my favourite characters to battle.

 My favourite part of Pokkén tournament is when you mega evolve and you can turn into a new evolution. To mega evolve you have to get a few hits and wait for a bar to go up and then you press two buttons to trigger off mega-evolution. You can also play multi-player which is lots of fun. A few days ago my next door neighbours and us had a tournament and I won it. You can also play in single player mode. In the single player mode you can play against the computer and level up  your Pokémon to make it stronger. On Pokkén tournament you have extra characters that you can send in and help you.When they help you they will only help you for a few seconds and then you'll have to wait a while before you can call for backup again.

I play mostly on two player but I hope when I play on one player that I can unlock more things to use or play as. My favourite character on this game is Charazard because he is easy to control but I also love Lucario. On Pokkén tournament the controls are easy. Opeie really likes playing as Machamp and sometimes it is really hard to beat him because he just keeps smashing us and Mega evolving.

 As well as mega-evolving there is a massive selection of arena's to battle in. There's a Dojo one and lots of others for battle. The magma one is my favourite.

    By the way I'm really excited about Pokémon sun and moon on the 3DSbecause they are brand new Pokémon games and I love being able to take my Pokémon games out with me on my 3DS. Pauly said that when it comes out we can maybe get sun and moon so that we can play together, I am excited about that the most.

"We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality. We create it to beable to stay."

The Super Mario Maker buzz is still going strong in our home and it has clearly become Seth's favourite game from 2015. He will happily spend the time he has while doing his physio creating interesting courses for us to play. When he's not creating though he loves searching the awesome course world for creative courses to play as there is a huge selection.

Seth came out of school recently and told us that he had been watching a Dick and Dom show in class and really enjoyed watching them wreck a full size remote control car, so he was really excited when I told him that they had created 3 Super Mario Maker levels that could be downloaded in the course world and I had the codes.

Being a huge Mario fan myself Ive loved playing all of the games so far but Super Mario Maker really does have that something special and i love all the hype that's been attached to it along with all the great collaborations come with it too (like the Mercedes Benz level). Dick and Dom definitely did the game justice. If you want to attempt their levels yourself here are their codes:

Dick's level - F15E-0000-0114-40CD

Dom's level - 9C14-0000-0108-C0F9 

Dick and Dom's co-created level - C78F-0000-0124-C6FB

 Happy gaming.

"Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated."

With the release of Mario kart 8 two weeks ago Nintendo has set us bloggers a series of mariokart related activities to mark the occasion. I'm so behind on the posts I want and need to write at the moment that I've put activity 1 and 2 together.

Activity 1 was to design our own karts and think about what their special abilities would be. When you have a craft idea it's difficult to keep a three year old interested especially one that gets easily distracted with the feathers, beads and string in our craft box. Opeie found out his Nintendo themed characters and we set about making them some fun rides. Dry bones apparently needed an invisible car. I did think of just dangling him on some cotton and taking a picture, well the cars invisible, but where is the creativeness in that. Opeie found some clear plastic and we got to work. We'd been munching on jam tarts that afternoon and Opeie wanted to use the foil cases for wheels. A couple of googly eyes and we had a kart.

For Yoshi we designed an Unwheeled kart out of plastic toy eggs. Opeie wanted a car that 'stomped'. He informed me that it can also eat other karts, yummy.

Our karts needed a track which was activity 2 so as Seth was home we asked him for ideas. The weather has started to get a lot nicer recently so it was time to pack away the winter clothing. So our idea was to create 'winter weather wipeout' using our winter clothes. A track made of scarfs, earmuffs tunnels and plenty of wellies.

  

Seth came up with the wellie cannon, shooting the racers further along the course.

First over the wellie bridge finish line was Dry bones, the boys had a great time building their winter themed mariokart course.

They even managed to fend off the snapping crocodile gloves...

Reasons to be thankful for Nintendo: de-stressing

Waiting in the drivers seat again while Opeie sleeps, it just seems like the norm these days...

I had an awful morning a few days back and was left feeling very disappointed and quite upset. The care of our children is not to be taken lightly, it takes effort and patience but as I sat that morning at Opeie's nursery and watched a little boy sitting facing a wall (alone), crying and with no one trying to comfort him, calm him down or include him in any of the group activities I thought to myself 'what the hell are we doing here'. I'd rather not have anyone looking after Opeie but us and if I'm honest it annoys me that someone is getting paid to spend time with my best friend but I know being around other children is what Opeie needs at the moment for his development.

Myself and Mrs M spent a lot of time talking about what we wanted for Opeie in regards to care outside of our family and when a nursery came along that suited us I was happy and prepared to place my trust and child in their hands. But as I watched the poor child that morning screaming for his mom and left to get on with it I felt guilty that I was attempting to leave Opeie there while he himself was very upset.

If I'd have left and a parent had told me that's how Opeie had been left I'd have been devastated, not to mention furious. I want and expect a lot more for my child, the boy that has filled me with so much happiness over the years. What would you have done? Well we left, Opeie was really upset and there was no way I was going to leave him to (in my head) possibly be ignored. I was almost in tears myself and the only reason I didn't go and comfort the little boy myself was because I was trying to calm Opeie down. 

There's two sides to every story which I am fully aware of and until I hear that side then I won't be making any rash decisions I just hate that guilty feeling and I'm not used to questioning myself in regards to the big decisions we make for our family. It was a very stressful couple of days.

I know the title of this post doesn't seem to fit the rest of the post but i hadn't been in the best mood that day which can be difficult when trying to entertain a child in a fragile mood. I wasn't going to write the post but as a sat in the car outside Seth's school while Opeie slept I switched on my console (which goes everywhere with me) and felt a sigh of relief. There's something quite comforting about those quiet moments, switching on my 3ds and switching the rest of the world off briefly.  I can always rely on Nintendo to de-stress me when I'm feeling down and when Opeie woke up I could continue my day a little less on edge.

Now back to my game...