Family Game Night Trauma

We have been playing a lot of board games with the girls. They are just to the age where they like fun games. No offense to Hi-ho Cherrio, Chutes and Ladders and Candyland, but those games suck. And don't get me started on "Snail's Pace Race" - as fun as it sounds! Actually, it's more fun than that, since it's a "cooperative" game where the snails move toward the finish line and everybody wins!

But lately we have been playing Uno, and Yatzee, and Clue! The girls picked up Clue quickly and pretty much have the strategy down. The thing they don't have down is good concentration, so it's not unheard of for one of them to tell you she does not have Miss Scarlett, the revolver, or the Sauna (it's an updated mansion*), when she in fact has one or more of them. Which kind-of screws up my strategy of relying on people to tell me what they do and don't have. We call playing with them the "Enhanced, challenging" version of Clue.

* the new mansion still has secret passages, but they are now from the media room to the screened-in porch. And there are new weapons, like poison, a barbell, and the withering sarcasm of a bitter parent. (It was Mrs. White, in the Breakfast Nook, with anger and dissappointment!)

We introduced Life last week, which they love. Life is also updated, and it's difficult to go through the game without amassing at least $1 million dollars. At least they have kept the little plastic cars and plastic people. One is still required to get married and buy a house, but Jill and I have expanded the definition of family by allowing gay-Life-marriage. At the end of each game, we count up the money, and the girls don't seem to mind if they lose $3,205,000 to $2,765,000. Hey, we're all rich, and we all have these lovely plastic stick babies!



Jill taught them Monopoly after that. They understand money, they get strategy, they seem to take losing in stride, they both like railroads...why not? Well, Monopoly ends differently than Life. You don't come in second as a less-rich millionaire. You win by utterly and completely wiping out your competition. Which happened to Alexis after a two-hour game. And caused her to cry for thirty minutes. Partly because it was Abby doing the wiping out. She took all of her money and all of her property, and wouldn't even give her the leisure pox!

I'm kinda thinking I might wait to teach her Risk.