For Christmas Marco and I got Roger a copy of Exploding Kittens, a card game “for people who are into kittens and explosions. And laser beams. And sometimes goats”. In this case we got the NSFW version, but they also have a normal version.

A look at the card game
It’s an interesting card game. The goal is to not get an exploding kitten card (the black card at right). If you do, you are out of the game unless you also have a green defuse card like the one on the left. Two interesting twists:
- You end your turn by picking up a card, rather than starting your turn by doing so.
- There is no need to reshuffle the current deck because the game will definitely end by the last card. This is because you the number of exploding kittens and defuse cards is based on the size of the group playing, and you always have one less defuse card than exploding kitten card.
We also played a game of Skip-Bo, another card game. That game has the advantage of time management – the number of cards you deal at the beginning of the game to each player is your choice. If you deal less cards, the game ends quicker than if you had dealt more cards.
Finally, a shoutout to a friend living in Japan who sent over some nice snacks. In this case, the Japanese snacks are the larger pieces in the upper right:
Not quite sure what they are made of, but they were good! Thanks again!
The other snacks are sour cream and chive pretzels as well as Dutch borrelnootjes (“party nuts”) – Dutch Wikipedia. They are peanuts surrounded by a salty, spiced layer. A bit hard to describe, but tasty in moderation.