Game Time!

I'm not sure how many of you know me well enough to have a sense of how happy this image makes me, but in case you don't, let me tell you:  This. Makes. Me. SO. Happy.  I LOVE playing games.  So many of my happy memories are linked with sitting around a table playing games...Dziadzu (my grandfather) teaching me how to shuffle a deck of cards the cool way and Babcia (my grandmother) teaching me how to play War....endless memories of sitting around the kitchen table playing game after game with my siblings during Christmas vacations.....playing quiet games of Pitch with high school/college buddies and showing off my amazing card tricks (I'm normally very sarcastic, but I really do have a couple of really cool card tricks up my sleeve)....more into-the-wee-hours-of the-morning card games than I can remember with Nathan and our good friend Shawn during our New York, pre-kid days....just for the hell of it, I'm going to test my brain and try and list as many games I can possibly remember having a blast playing...stream of consciousness here, so there are card games mixed up with board and dice games and I'm not going to try and organize them.  Any of you out there reading who have spent time around a table with me at any point over the years, please add to the list if you can:

Peanuts
Pitch
Hearts
Spit
War
Pictionary
Cranium
Bananas
Yahtzee
Dominos
Blokus
21 (not Blackjack)
Solitaire
The Clock Game
Cleveland Circle
Casino (Nathan and Shawn, please remind me how to play?!  Honestly, I know I ask every time we play but...I love it so much, I KNOW I do!)
Gin
Rummy 500
Asshole
Mad Gab
Mancala
Killer
Apples to Apples

I feel like there's so many more but that's all I can eek out of my rusty brain right now....

Anyway, I really miss those days of playing games.  Nathan and I don't play anymore since we don't spend our evenings drinking beer and staying up as late as possible.  I only get together with my family once in a great while and there's usually so much to do and so many small kids to take care of that we're all exhausted by the time the kids go to bed....

SO, imagine my total surprise and glee when I recently learned that Zoe can actually play a few of these games with me if I teach her!  Yes, she has to be in just the right mood and yes, sometimes I have to modify the rules just a bit, but still--it's more than I'd dreamed possible this early on (don't worry, I'm not planning on teaching her how to play Asshole.  I'll leave that to her first drinking buddies, assuming people will still be playing it by then).  These past couple of weeks we've played an almost daily game of Domino's (can't back it up!), War, Solitaire and The Clock Game and have gotten through a whole game of Yahtzee twice.  By the way, she BEAT ME BOTH TIMES....the scorecard above is hard to read but she wrote out all the  numbers herself and beat me by one point.  I gave her guidance but she made all of the decisions.  The first time, it was after she begged me to play for a good 5 minutes...I was resistant because I know how frustrated she gets when she doesn't understand something but I finally gave in reluctantly...by her second roll, she was saying "I'm goin' for my 5's!", on her fourth turn she got a Yahtzee with 6's and she beat me 234 to 187. 

So, maybe my game playing days will make a resurgence as the kids get older.  I hope they enjoy playing as much as I always have because I can't tell you how psyched I'd be to sit around the kitchen table and play a nice long game of Hearts with my husband and two awesome kids.