For those of you that don't know, Chloe is my daughter.  She's actually my step-daughter, but I've accepted her in my heart as my daughter.  I've known her for just about 4 years now, and during that short time have come to teach her the ways of the geek.  As I was going through the pictures I have of her on my phone/facebook/etc, I picked out a couple that stood out to me as some of our geekier times, listed chronologically:

I am a pretty big video gamer (as most of you are well aware of), so it was only natural that I would try and share this love of gaming with Chloe.  Being too young for some of the games I was playing such as Halo, Call of Duty, etc., we started off with games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.  Later, we moved on to games like Castle Crashers, Mario Kart, and even Minecraft!  In fact, we even did a whole podcast devoted to the games we played, until we decided we wanted to talk about other topics too.

Technically a video game, WoW deserves its own category just from the amount of time we've played it compared to other games.  It all started back one day when Ashley was over at my apartment with Chloe.  She was borrowing my shower (it may have been after we had been outside rummaging through the snow), and Chloe was watching TV while I was playing WoW.  She came over to where I was, curious as to what I was doing.  So instead of telling her about it, I let her make a character and showed her how to play.  She took to it in no time (I've got video proof of this below), and has since fallen in love with the game.  She got her own account so that she could make multiple characters - probably her favorite aspect of the game.  Sometimes, we will both play next to each other, but nowadays if we are both playing we will jump on our Goblins.  We've been leveling them together, and we've gotten them up to level 26 or so.

Another early moment between Chloe and I (although the picture is from this past Christmas) is our fondness of LEGO Bricks (I've been recently corrected that they are LEGO Bricks, not LEGOs).  Back before I moved in with Chloe and Ashley, I was searching for things to have at my apartment for when Chloe would come over.  When I was growing up, I LOVED LEGO Bricks.  I used to build all sorts of contraptions with them, both sets and just free building things with whatever random pieces I had laying around. So, I thought that it would be nice to have a bucket of LEGO Bricks that I could pull out whenever Chloe came over.  They were a hit with her, and we've been playing with various LEGO sets ever since.  She's in love with the LEGO Friends sets, so I imagine that her LEGO collection will not be ending anytime soon.

I'll talk more about comic cons in a little bit, but I threw Annapolis Comic Con up here separately because it was the first 'con that I attended as a participant, not as a fan.  I bought a booth, had signs and handouts made - even had a contest!  Chloe got excited for the comic con too - she had us buy a Batgirl outfit that she wore for the 'con and stood at the booth handing out fliers and promoting the show.  She had a blast!

Chloe and myself love to dress up - especially for halloween.  In 2011, we were looking for costumes in Kmart when we stumbled upon some "The Walking Dead" costumes for the creepy zombie girl in the pilot and Rick Grimes.  We bought the costumes and went as a matching pair for Halloween that year.  Chloe was so creepy as a zombie!  She hated the mouthpiece that got glued onto her face, but it just fully completes the costume.  People don't believe me when I talk about how creepy she looked as a zombie, so I like to have these pictures available on my phone for me to pull out and prove to them.

Fast forward to May 2012 - The Avengers is in opening in theaters!  Chloe loves comic books, so we knew that we should take her along to see the movie with us (and we weren't going at midnight this time).  She had a couple of the Thor pieces that were available in the toy aisle, so she threw those on and went to the movie with us.  She was tired, so she did fall asleep in the middle for a few minutes, but overall she loved the movie.

We've taken Chloe to about 3 or 4 comic conventions over the years, but our family's favorite convention each year is Baltimore Comic Con.  It is close by, has lots of great stuff to look at, and there are plenty of great deals to be had!  The past couple of times we have went, Ashley has found us some great deals on World of Warcraft action figures, combining two of our geeky hobbies.

Deciding that Chloe was not geeky enough after all of this, I taught Chloe how to play the card game Magic: The Gathering.  She had seen me look at the cards in the game aisle and watched me play the Duels of the Planeswalkers video game, so she had been curious of the game for quite awhile.  I had been waiting for her to get older to understand the game, but finally I took a risk and taught her how to play.  She beat me on her first time playing!  Needless to say, she picked up the game pretty well and even got her own Magic deck to play with for Christmas.  I'm hoping that she can get good enough at the game on her own that we can play in some local tournaments at some point.

Last on the list but probably first in her heart is the card game Munchkin.  I taught her how to play around the same time that I taught her Magic, and she caught onto this game the most.  Any time we have a free moment, she is asking to play Munchkin.  I think she's been playing it too much though - she is getting really good at it!  She has become really devious at the game; pulling out monster enhancers at the best time so that you have to have help, then offering her assistance.  I'm going to have to keep my eye on her from now on when we play.

So there are my geeky moments with Chloe.  I'm sure we will have many more over the years and I can't wait to share them with her.  You can hear about them as well, by listening to our podcast "The Adventures of Chloe". It's all about me teaching her how to be a geek, while she teaches me how to be a dad.