Family Game Night

My friend, Renee, posted about her kids having a game night with their grandparents.  They were playing the game of Life and instead of the spinner they were using the iPad.  They were still using the game board, just had the addition of the iPad which she thought was a little strange, yet doable, since they were still sitting and playing a game together.  At our house we do it a little differently.

First of all, it's challenging to find a game that the whole family can play together when the youngest child can basically only play Chutes and Ladders or Candy Land and the oldest child can play games like Risk.  Second, the girls love to get silly and crazy when playing games which makes them laugh out of control and makes everybody else want to quit long before we are even close to the end of the game.  Or they cry because the rules are relentlessly unfair.  You see our problem.

A few days ago Charlie declared that we were going to have a Family Game Night.  We requested that the kids go downstairs to the basement to pick out a game several times but nobody did.  They were either too lazy or too scared to go in the basement by themselves.  I hate going in the basement by myself, so I totally get that.  At this point you would think that Charlie or I would just go down and pick a game ourselves, except we are the band leaders when it comes to laziness and we didn't want to go down there to pick a game either.

So, we each grabbed our respective electronic device and sat on the couch and independently played together.  I'm not really that proud of this moment, except that we did talk to each other for most of the evening, granted it was about what was going on in our games, and nobody got mad at each other or cried. We were all pretty much playing Hay Day, a game where you run and grow your own farm, except for Andy who thinks he's too cool for Hay Day.  I like it for the kids because you are trying to run a business (your farm) and have to figure out how to use your time, money and resources wisely.  Plus we can help each other out.  A nice, educational, but fun and addictive game.

We will have to revisit to Family Game Night, and next time use an old fashioned board game.  Hopefully we can find a game we can all agree on.