12.05.2008

Shame on you grandma!

So every family has holiday traditions. In the Heskett family there is a Thanksgiving/Christmas tradition that I have come to love. They eat dinner at straight up noon and then spend the afternoon playing games, cards, and watching holiday movies together. Bret and I have always loved to play games, in fact our hall closet is so full of different board games that we have had to stash some in other closets as well.

One year on the eve of Thanksgiving at Bret's parents house his mom, aunt, uncle, grandmother (85 at the time), sister, and us all sat down to play a new game that Bret and I had brought. It was called Beyond Balderdash. Balderdash is a game of bluffing or in Bret's family...BS'ing. Balderdash would just give a word and everyone would write down what they thought the word meant. Then taking turns a person would read all of the written definitions including the real definition. Then each person would vote for which definition was correct. You got points for guessing the real definition and if people voted for your crap definition. Beyond Balderdash was the same except it included more categories such as Movie Titles where you had to give the plot gist, dates where you had to tell why the date was significant, etc.

On this particular evening the list of players was perfect for an evening of fun and proved to not disappoint. Bret and his uncle both believe that they are the kings of BS, his grandmother is creative but naive and his young sister made his mom blush on several occasions. On one particular turn his Aunt had the category of movie title and although I can't remember the exact title it was something like Girls Night Out. When his aunt collected the different answers she had to leave the room to compose herself. She was crying she was laughing so hard and we were anxiously waiting her return. Trying her best to keep a straight face she read through the definitions and we were aware of her difficulty to keep from laughing. The definitions were scandalous and one stuck out as extra R rated. After everyone voted Bret's mom started to lecture Bret's sister about the inappropriateness of her answer when his aunt stepped in to say that in fact it was his grandmother in her distinct writing that had submitted the R rated definition. Bret's grandmother smiled shyly and just replied that a title like that sounded too fast for her times.

I feel bad that my memory of what exactly was said is still pretty hazy but the point was how much fun we had and how hard we laughed. Games are an opportunity to have fun with each other. We love the competitiveness of it and it is something people of all ages can do together. Our four year old loves to play games and has all of the classics and then some. Her favorite games are Cariboo (we call this the ball game and it is my 2 year old's favorite too), Hi Ho Cherry-O, Memory, and the Kids version of Sequence (she calls it the animal game). Games teach kids to take turns, how to win some and lose some, and sometimes about counting/numbers/colors, etc.
Games are so loved in our family that there are always several under our tree at Christmas. Last year in fact Bret and I got the same game for each other unexpectantly. Bret's new favorite game is his PS3. His favorites are NCAA football and a couple of weird fighting games. I am really excited to see that the video game world is starting to come out with some family friendly games. We are getting the monopoly game and trivial pursuit for the PS3. Eventually we hope to get the wii and they have even cooler games for kids. Check out these links for the latest games for the people on your list and tell me your favorite game to play, board game, video game, computer game?

1) http://www.ea.com/

2) http://blog.parentbloggers.com/

This post is part of a weekend blog blast sponsored by Parent Bloggers and Electronic Arts.


Here’s how to participate:
Write a post on your blog about the games you play at family holiday gatherings. Post anytime this weekend -Friday, December 5 to Sunday, December 7 and include links to:
1)
http://www.ea.com

Make sure to send your blog post link to parentbloggers@gmail.com and we’ll round them up here at PBN - so give your post a creative title!













1 comment:

Unknown said...

My family always plays games on every major holiday! Our favorites are Phase 10, Apples to Apples, You've Been Sentenced, Taboo, and Aquire (a game about buying and selling stocks that they haven't made since the 70's. It sounds boring, but it's not.)

Thanks for the tips on the interview dinner, by the way!