Games

Board games were not something I really grew up playing so as an adult there has not been much appeal to me in playing them other than when with some family. My wife’s family however loves playing games and they have introduced me to plenty over the years but still most of the time they would play and I would set out with little interest. That was until I spent time with her grandmother who loved playing games. You could ask her anytime if she wanted to play a game and she was always happy to do so. I’m not sure what the difference was with her but I really like playing dominoes with her over the years. She has this huge dining room table that would allow you to run the dominoes far across it until  you stacked them. She was a good sport too never saying anything mean although she did have a good sense of humor. Playing games with her made me feel really calm and welcome. I miss her.

We have a pretty large selection of games in our home but I don’t think we have ever really played them as much as I would have like to and thinking back over the years I wish I had made more of an effort to have game nights with them. It really is a great time to work together, be around the people you care about and just spend time together rather than having every scattered around the house doing their own thing. That still happens in my house and I guess it’s alright but I would like if we could all just get together for a game. When you have four kids it’s work though and the stress of that sometimes takes away from the attempt to have a good moment. That work though I think is worth the effort. Yesterday I took my youngest to the store to look for a game or two even though I knew there were more than enough here to choose from and my wife even said so but I think she knew it wasn’t a big deal not that it would have changed my mind.

The two games we picked, or I should say my daughter picked one and I picked the other. Her selection , “Beat The Parents” a trivia based game where parents ask kids questions that parents know but kids might not. The kids ask parents questions most kids would know but parents might not. For example “what color are the creatures in the move Avatar?” That one is easy enough but the other questions were lost on me. The game I picked was “Munchkin Legend” which looked like a game that my oldest son might really enjoy and from what I read on the box looked simple enough but when we started reading the directions it was obvious this game was really involved. There is a large fold out with rules in each side some being hard to understand. She had some Rum and Coke so I don’t know, that might have made it a little harder to understand. We eventually started playing and ten minutes into the first game we stopped and started over just because we were skipping steps but eventually started to get it and began a fresh game. This might be my favorite game to play now, even if we might have missed some of the rules I still thought it was a great time.  Really though being there with at least part of my family was the best part. I wish I could always do that.