My first Minecraft world

I've started playing Minecraft, my 11-year-old daughter's favorite. She was six when I bought the game, and as it could be expected, she became addicted. I never got into it, but have been thinking about starting a survival, just to see how I would do. I recently read a discussion on a gaming forum about what people thought was the best video game ever. Gamers of all ages and personal preferences seemed to agree that it was Minecraft. So after I finished Odyssey, I decided to spend the rest of May playing Minecraft before I start the next game on my must-play list. :)

Sandbox games like Minecraft aren't my favorite, because I need some specific goal to keep me playing. The reason I didn't lose interest in The Sims games for 15 years was that I always played a challenge, the legacy challenge being my favorite. So in Minecraft, I came up with the following little personal challenge:

• Have a sheep of each 16 colors available in Minecraft

Currently, I have 10 different-colored sheep. :) Acquiring cocoa beans to create brown dye seems to be one of the biggest challenges in achieving my goal. I'm now about to move to a new house close to a big lake as I can see some promising islands and tall mountains from the shore. Close to my first house, I dug a pretty nice mine where I found iron, diamond, redstone, emerald and reached bedrock. But to have a brown sheep, I will eventually need cocoa beans. :)

The above photo was taken from the top of a very tall stack of various blocks built on top of my first house so that I can find it from a distance without a map.