And I don't even like rum . . .

One of my strategies as a parent has been to not learn everything I can about everything in which my kids are interested. This is ostensibly so that they have to figure it out for themselves, thus learning as they go. In reality, it also saves my *ss from having to fix everything ("Sorry! Mom doesn't know how that works!!") when there is a problem.

That's not to say that I don't help. But if my goal is to assist them in solving their own problems, having the answers isn't always necessary. And that saves me from learning about things in which *I* have no particular interest. Like a lot of Xbox games (but that's another story).

Minecraft is one of those interests about which I have no particular desire to learn.

And to illustrate my ignorance, I have no idea what's going on this picture. And I don't really care.

This is what it looks like sometimes in my house:

Well, except that we only have one laptop. And both of my kids are boys. And they typically are playing on the computer in their pajamas. Okay, it doesn't really look like this at all . . . 

Minecraft occupies enormous amounts of their time, both on and off the computer. If they're on, they're playing, researching, watching Minecraft videos on YouTube . . . if they're off, they're talking about what they're going to build, how they'll build it, how many chickens it will kill . . . .

And lately, thanks I suspect to YouTube, they've discovered mods. They MUST HAVE MODS. Which are apparently things that modify (see, I figured that one out on my own) Minecraft and give one access to all sorts of cool things: planes, parachutes, monkeys, Mario, pina coladas. Yes, Pina Coladas. Like the one that Milton got by mistake.

Excuse me? Excuse me, senor? May I speak to you please? I asked for a mai tai, and they brought me a pina colada, and I said no salt, NO salt for the margarita, but it had salt on it, big grains of salt, floating in the glass...

This morning, they are playing Minecraft and insist on showing me almost all the cool stuff in the Tropic Mod that was installed last night (by Computer Expert Dad) - and for two boys who love Florida, Tropic Mod is apparently rocking their world. And I use almost because after I left the room, I overheard:

"Hey, N, you could order a delicious Pina Colada! Aren't these Pina Coladas great?"

"Hey, don't toss out my Pina Coladas!" 

"I'm going back to the beach. You can have my Pina Colada." 

"This place is perfect! It has Pina Coladas!"

"Pina Coladas! Pina Coladas! Pina Coladas!" (That from the 12yo, walking in a circle around the house.)

So apparently the most fun thing in this particular mod isn't the beach or the ocean or the swimming pools that they are building. It's the cocktails.