Games

I've always enjoyed playing games. When I was growing up, our family played board games, dice games and card games. (We would, of course, hide the playing cards when my grandparents came over and replace them with good, acceptable Nazarene Rook cards.) We played Pinochle, Nertz, Ten Thousand, Monopoly, Masterpiece, Authors, Sweat, Triominoes and Upwards to name a few. (NERD ALERT): In high school, my mom and dad and I even had a running Chess tournament. I would often stay home on Friday nights and beat my parents at Chess. OK, they beat me occasionally, but I gave them a good run for their money!! I have very fond memories of game-playing parties with friends from church and with family on the holidays. When I started dating Rob, I loved the fact that he and his family also enjoyed playing games. We often hung out with his family playing Pictionary and other games instead of going out. We spent a lot of time at his grandparents house playing Pinochle and Canasta. After Zach was born, we were unbeatable against his grandparents because Grandma Bert was far to distracted by the baby to concentrate on the game. Even when Grandpa Harry called her a "Dumb Cluck", she just smiled and played a card in our favor. (side note: the week before Grandma died, we were playing Pinochle in the motor home at the cabin and they beat us for the first time since Zach was born! He was 5 at the time.) Shortly after Grandma died, Gloria was born and although we still played Rummy with Grandpa, we didn't seem to play too many games. I'm off on a tangent, but the end of 1998 was a crazy, busy, sad, difficult time for all of us. Grandma died suddenly on our anniversary, August 25th, 1998, we had her funeral on Zach's birthday, August 29th, Zach started Kindergarten at Cole Christian a couple of days later, I quit my home daycare to hang out and help Grandpa, Gloria was born on December 11th via c-section and throughout all of this BFC was heading for the big split that happened on Valentines Day, 1999. (I had some minor post-partum depression that was probably due to all the stressful things happening around me and after Gloria was born, I was sure I had ruined Zach's life.) Rob started building cases toward the end of 1999 and quit his job to do it full time in 2000. I taught toddler/preschool music classes as well as helping him and taking care of a baby, eventually quitting to help him but finding there wasn't enough income for both of us yet, so I started another home daycare. During this time I was helping Rob, homeschooling Zach, taking care of a toddler and operating a 6-child daycare for 40-plus hours/week. There was no time for games (I'm coming back around to my original topic!!). I eventually had to quit the daycare as the case business grew into a sound company and the rest is history!! Well, it's all history, but I'm trying to say that game-playing has taken a back burner to everything else over the years. When the opportunity to play games has come up over the years, I've jumped at the chance, but games have been few and far between. However. . . I seem to be entering a new phase of my life. It could be temporary and short lived, but I've had time on my hands the last couple of months that I've been able to use for things I enjoy. The other night, Zach beat me quite badly at LOTR Risk but I beat the whole family a couple of nights later at LOTR Trivial Pursuit. This prompted me to invite us over to my parents house on Monday night to play Monopoly. They were surprised but pleased at the idea and we had a really fun time. I can be pretty brutal at Monopoly (I get this trait from my dad!!) so, in this picture, I'm am taking over and it's pretty obvious by the looks on the faces of my family!!!

I know I could have said all of this in a shorter, more concise way, but it's my blog and I enjoyed my trip down memory lane!!! :)