These two pictures have nothing to do with today’s entry, they just happened to be two that I took today and loved, so I posted them. Breanna thinks these cat ears are incredibly funny.

And Hayley just looks pretty with them on.

Today was one step towards getting on with Christmas. Two games for Hayley arrived today, via super secret FedEx. Well, sort of secret. Just in the sense that Hayley was playing in her room with the door closed and had her music blasting (wait a minute… is she a teenager already?!) and didn’t hear the guy come to the door. They’re both Cranium games, and I can barely wait to give them to her but I will wrap them up and just hang in there. One is called Cariboo, and it’s a treasure hunt game that she’s played once before at a friend’s house. They were all only three back then and she’s much more into games now so I think she’ll be really happy; it’s a very cute game. The other one is called Hullaballoo and I’m very interested in this one because it seems like a very good activity game for long and cold winter days. It’s almost like a combination of statue, twister, and musical chairs. I look forward to playing them with her.

Playing games was a big part of my own childhood. We regularly played board games like Mastermind, Parcheesi, Life, Battleship, Clue, and many more than I can’t even think of right now. To this day I still love board games but my circle of friends doesn’t really do that. George and I played Scrabble once, many years ago in Halifax but haven’t since, despite having a set in our cupboard. I don’t know why, it’s one of my favorites. I also love Boggle, also because of the word geek factor, and I love Scattergories which is my current favorite of all. I’m equally open to card games too, and have fond memories of exciting rounds of 31 and May I? with my family, especially my grandmother on my dad’s side; we spend many summer afternoons having lunch at her table and then playing cards.

When we used to go to Vermont for a week with my aunt and uncle, and sometimes my cousins, we would sit in the add-on room of the trailer, facing Lake Champlain in a really nice, fairly quiet recreational trailer park. There, at about 9 pm, we would start to play a board game called Balderdash. The object is to try to fake people out. When it’s your turn, you read out an obscure word. Everyone then makes up some sort of definition (or the real one if they should happen to know it), and then you read all the definitions plus the real one. People guess what the real definition is; players get points if they fake you out and anyone guessing the actual meaning of the word gets bonus points.

Typed out it sounds tame. In reality it is a hysterically funny game. The level of ridiculousness we would reach in our phony definitions – and the fact that people, usually my poor aunt – would believe the craziest ones, would have us laughing so loud that I’m surprised we never got kicked out or at least given a warning. What with the lake right there in front of us, I’m sure there must have been some echo factor that carried our voices and our incredulous outbursts – “you really believed it was a special brush made for detangling a skunk’s fur?!” – all over the park.

I miss playing games. I’m glad Hayley likes them too. We play Snakes and Ladders, obnoxious though it may be sometimes, and we play the farm Hide and Seek board game that she loves so much. In between, we play Go Fish. I know my dad has gotten her the Dora version of Candyland and I look forward to that as well as our two new games. It’s a really nice way for us to pass Breanna’s nap time. When she gets a little older, I want to introduce her to other childhood favorites, like the ones mentioned earlier, plus Operation, Mousetrap, and even games like Connect Four.

The only game that will be conspicuously missing from our collection, much to my sister’s disappointment will be Monopoly. There have been games I have loved and games that were mediocre but acceptable. Monopoly is the one game I flat out despise and refuse to play again.

Sorry Amanda! Maybe you can get yourself a Monopoly set and Hayley can come play it with you!