You sunk my Battleship

A bit of X-wing with the lads.  Mini-Me Major had a base to defend (with unlimited Tie-fighters) while Minor and I attacked with the Assault frigate and escorts.

The Rebels

 Tie interceptor zaps an A-wing

 A bit more to-and-fro on fighter loss

 BRAAAAAP, Assault Frigate opens up

 Zooom, more Ties appear

 Chaaaarge goes Mini-Me

 Furball

 KAPOW

KaBlewie!  The Ties all ignore the fighters and focus on the Frigate.  Mini-Me Major takes it down in spectacular fashion - then he does a victory dance

Minor had so much fun he wanted to play again and take his own pics

This was a short and fun game with this lads before dinner.  Was totally just an excuse to get the toys out and blast some starships to atoms!

Sunflowers

Mini-Me Major and I had a plan this year - plan tons of sunflowers, so we did.  Unfortunately, we mixed all the seed packets up so we had no idea what was coming.  Turns out we planted some really unusual ones.
Like, black sunflowers, who knew there was black ones!

 There were dwarf ones (at the front)

 Giant ones (RHS are over 7ft tall)

 We ended up with over 140 planted, which made for quite a dense wall

These bronze ones were nice and the flowers lasted a long time

 A more orange version

 I think these are called Teddybear ones

 These were more traditional looking, front has yellow middle, back had the black center

 These were like a traditional flower but in miniature

This was a really fun garden project with Mini-Me Major and made for a really pretty walk along the side of the garden all summer, as well as tons of cut flowers for the house

Busy Busy Busy

Busy summer, busy but a lot of fun.  The Mrs OA and I took the Mini-Mes off to the linked villages of Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis in the Austrian Alps. 
For a bit of this

 And a bunch of this

It was an excellent trip, everyone really enjoyed themselves. We will be taking them back to the mountains sometime soon.

Then, I went off for work, to Athens

 Where it was very hot and sunny (this is right at the entrance to the Parthenon)

 I was there to attend this conference

This is an intense week of conference, it's usually in great locations, and it is chock full of really useful information.

A little later, I went off to the Catalonian Pyrenees to go ride my bike with these guys:

What an amazing place to ride.  This was my first time riding in Spain, and WOW! The guides were superb and the trails were epic. To use bike jargon, there was much stoke going on.  So here's a few pics of the place and me riding there...

First a climb up

 To here

 That way

 Yup, down there

Like this

 And this

Then there's these places

And more riding bits

No words for these riding pics, it was that good!

Its been a while... ...time to roll the cubes of randomness

This summer has been busy.  More on that later.  For now its time for a bunch of pics with very few words.  Let It Begin!

UNSC base about to be attacked

 Marines have to escort scientists off the bottom base edge

 Yup

 That's them

 Going here...

 However, the Collective may disagree...

 BLAMMO, BLAMMO, the collective not doing so well this time

 Marines kicking Bum and Taking Names!

 Mmmm, things not going the Collective's way

 Still not

 Chaaarge!

 Ker-Splat!

 Ouch

 Run away?

 Yup

 Ooops

 Mega reinforcements!

 Maybe not

 He's mine!

 Braaaaap!, no he's not

 Run Run Run

 Huzzah! the Marines made it. 

This was using one of the pre-canned Ambush alley scenarios, in this case the Marines were pretty decent troops while the insurgents were pretty much cannon fodder.  It kind of played out that way too.

This was a quick game I managed to fit in between stuff, I ran it a while ago and forgot to blog it.  I thought I'd post it up to reming myself to do this in a more timely manner next time.