Game Playing

Today's blog about gratitude is an easy one...playing a board game with my family. I am grateful that the kids want to play games with their parents; I am thankful that husband likes to play with his kids and I am glad that these game playing nights don't end in hot tempers and fist fights.

Today it was Daddy's pick for game night and as is his usual method of picking, he went around the room asking what everyone's favourite game was. Despite the two very vocal picks for the new Disney DVD Pictionary game we were given for Christmas, Daddy picked CandyLand. Yes, Candy Land which sent Baby Girl into fits of "Yeah! Yeah that's my game!"

I have never played this game. I have heard plenty about it, particularly from a former good friend of mine whose girls absolutely, utterly loved this game. Not knowing anything about it, I think I was expecting far more from this game than the simplified Snakes & Ladders game that it was. I do wonder what the appeal is but then, I am not a 4 year old girl so there you go...you just go with the flow.

The first round, and we usually only play one round on game nights, we played the standard way. This was fine and was probably made even more exciting by the periodic chucking of jelly bellies at the kids by Daddy. Well, Daddy won and since there were plenty of jelly bellies left, we decided to play again. I highly recommend this second, more challenging way to play, unless of course, you are against candy (but then you probably shouldn't play this game at all since the whole board is one huge reminder of all the candy you don't have readily available to munch on). We each were given three jelly bellies of the same colour and one of these three went on the start space. Play is the same as the standard rules with the following twists: if someone lands on your space, he/she gets to eat your jelly belly and you have to put one from your stash back on the start space. This happened so much to me that the game had barely begun and I was down to my last jelly belly already. The second twist was that if you landed on a licorice space, not only did you miss a turn (as per the rules) you also had to eat your jelly belly, thereby losing another from your stash. When your stash is gone and the last of your jelly bellies in play gets eaten, YOU ARE DONE, game over for you, fini, adios.

Baby Girl had all her stash eaten and she was the only one that actually had to be out of the game this way. She didn't cry which was a change since she hates to lose. And it was a lot of fun. This way of playing the game was hilarious and the kids had a great time. And that is why I made it my reason for being grateful today.