I grew up in a family of board game lovers. I remember going to my grandparents’ house where the adults would all play what seemed like endless games of Yahtzee. The sound of dice clunking around in a plastic cup will forever remind me of my paternal grandmother, who died from lymphoma when I was just 9.
My 97-year-old grandmother is the biggest game nut I’ve ever known. She loves crosswords, word searches and board games of all kinds, and has a peculiar fondness for Scrabble. She is still very cognitively sharp, an attribute that I chalk up mostly to her constant need to keep her mind busy.
A die-hard competitor, my mother is in it for the win, whether you’re 5 or 97. If I won a game against my mom as a kid, I knew that I honestly beat her because she did not let anyone win purposely. (Also, she was visibly upset if she lost, right, Mom?) Man, was that a good feeling when I occasionally came away with the higher score.
It’s so nice to be past the Candyland era with the girls (call me a bad mom, but I despise Candyland and avoid it whenever possible). Though I’m not nearly as competitive as my mom, I’ve found myself treating my kids similarly concerning game playing. When they beat me, it’s fair and square. I just can’t throw a game for some reason.
It’s not that I care if I win, it’s mostly that I don’t want to give them a false sense of reality. Nobody wins everything in life. Plus there’s a heck of a lot more pride involved when you know you beat an adult because you played better than he or she did.
This past Christmas, my sister came up with a great idea for our sibling gift exchange — rather than getting every individual a gift, each of our families gave the other two a game. The one Rachel, Andie and I have played the most so far is called Carcassonne. It’s very, very addictive and it has multiple expansion sets for purchase, none of which we have. Yet.
We were going to tackle The Settlers of Catan, another gift with expansion sets, during Christmas break, but we got too caught up in Carcassonne. In fact, for about a week after the girls started school again, I eagerly awaited their arrival home so we could play again. I think they were actually beginning to be a bit annoyed.
A few other highly-recommended games we received for Christmas were Lost Cities, Blokus and Catan Card Game. We’re definitely set for my Annual Game Addicts Summer Marathon this year, which started when I was 12 and my sister was 10 and we kept a game of Monopoly going for an entire summer (or so it seemed).
What are some of your family’s favorite games?
