bored games

I was in a mad-dash-spring-cleaning-frenzy mood not too long ago. You know what I am talking about! You get the urge to purge and run around the house like a chicken with its head cut off, carrying around a black plastic bag. Well, at least that is what it looked like over here in our home. On my latest dash around the house I stopped dead in my tracks when I came upon the stack of miscellaneous board games in our family room cabinet. We had so many that the doors to the cabinet could not even close all the way! That was an instant "shout out" to me to take measures into my own hands. I must tackle this beast!

In the cabinet I was confronted with a random assortment of all sorts of games, puzzles, cards, and whatchamacallits. Some boxes were intact, others were barely there, hanging on for dear life. Homeless pegs, dice, and UNO cards practically were "begging" me for HELP! Loose instructions for games that "mysteriously" left the house (aka sold at a garage sale or sent to Goodwill) ages ago, were also among the mix. I literally had to pause and take a heavy breath before tackling this monster head-on. How did this all happen? Well let's see. Three kids times a gazillion birthdays and Christmas's equals a ton of games. Not the forget the garage and rummage sale found games! It all seems a blur.
I had to make a plan. First, decide which games did the kids absolutely not play with anymore (nor would they ask for them in a week after they suspected them missing!) Our youngest daughter is almost 7. Is Candyland still in the running? Ummm...I think it goes in the "maybe" pile, along with Chutes and Ladders (even though it has seem better days!) I knew we didn't need 2 Boggle Jr's, so one went into the bag. The Hi Ho Cherry O game with tons of missing cherries?...in the bag. The Winnie the Pooh puzzles were spared, as was the wooden snail race game. Some of the other keepers were Monopoly (dad's vintage edition, as well as the Spongebob version), Blokus and definitely UNO! Mastermind, Life, Battleship and Othello. Guess Who made it, as did I SPY.
Then I stumbled across Bingo! Oh, bingo! My kids are obsessed with bingo! For one of my children's birthdays (or was it Christmas?) a bingo game was given. In the box there is a wire cage that holds a ton of little tiny grey balls with numbers and letters. These balls are so small that on occasion a wandering vacuum nearly brought it to extinction! The set also includes a series of cardboard bingo cards, complete with (yes, again!) teeny tiny plastic "chips", for placing on the bingo card. Even with these chips being colorful, they too come close to being sucked up into never-again land! This is one of those games that gets the heart pumping! It can be played by any age and it is just old fashioned fun. It has made its way through generation to generation, and keeps on ticking. Just recently, though, I have decided to make the game a bit more "interesting." I took a trip to the Dollar store and purchased a bunch of prizes (aka.. candy). When the lucky winner calls out BINGO, they get to choose a prize from the box. This is a great game to play when the kids have friends over! Bingo stays.

Going through these games was like going down memory lane. Oh the fun times these games were, and still are. I can still remember being in a panic trying to remove the rubber band from the Operation game, without having the little red nose beep at me. Or, getting the Connect Four before my opponent did! I was (and still am) a competitive gal. I try to go easy on my kids though! It just made me realize that my kids are growing up! Their interest in games may be advancing, but the quality time spent playing games and just being together as a family is still so important. Priceless.