Family Entertainment

We've entered a new family phase. When we ride together in the car, Shane and I have to be very careful what we talk about. The children, with their little ears that cannot hear instructions to make their beds or brush their teeth, turn into very keen listeners with a short list of objectives:

A) Further their education in the Ways of the World
B) Memorize stories to repeat at inappropriate times to embarass the family

Lately, we've been playing games in the car, with the overwhelming favorite being Guess What Time We'll Get There. Everyone gets to pick a time and we each have our own strategy.
My strategy is driven by optimism. Shane usually tells the kids approximately how long the trip will be so they can make a good guess and then I pick a time that is a little less than what he said because I do not want to be in the car that long and hope I won't be.
Elsa's strategy is to pick a number right next to someone else's. You pick 7:45 and she'll pick 7:46 every time.
Josh's strategy is to pick 55. He doesn't care to pick an hour of the day, or that he could be way off. He always wants 55, with no parental corrections.
And finally, Shane's strategy. It's by far the most complex, taking into account past trips of the same distance or to the same destination. He then creates an algorithm factoring in time of day, day of the week, road conditions, weather possibilities, gas mileage, and whether we will be passing through areas with timed lights, which he highly approves of.

As a result he almost always wins. On the rare occasion that 55 works out for Josh, he declares that he as the winner is the Oregon Ducks and that the rest of us, the losers are Beavers. And then he laughs at us. It's good clean family fun.