New Year's Eve Events

Games are awesome. I interrupt my previously schedule flow of kids' drawings to give you two examples of why games rock.

1) New Year's Eve's Eve
No, it's not a typo. For the past sixteen years, my dear friends from university have held a party on the night of December 30. It's an eclectic mix of people and the festivities last from early afternoon, when most of the young families come, up until the last person leaves sometime after midnight. Poker is usually the game of choice for the late late evening. This year, before the poker chips made their appearance, we played some board games together as a group. I brought my new game, Spot It, to play with my friend's cousins, my friend's sister, two FoaFs (friend of a friend) that I had never met before that night, my nearly 12-year-old daughter, my friend, and me. It was simple and easy to learn. It was fun to play and broke the ice. Then we played The List of Things. We had nine people participate and it was quite funny. It's much better to play with a large group for this game, as the challenge involves guessing correctly and remembering all the options. (For those, like me, who have never played: there is a rotating leader position, who takes a card and reads out the topic, like "things that don't exist but you wish did" or "things you'd like to do with chocolate". The players write their answer on a scrap of paper and pass it to the leader. The leader reads out the list of things twice only. Then the rest of the players take turns guessing who wrote which thing. Points are given for correct guesses and people are eliminated from guessing if their item has been identified.) 

2) New Year's Eve
On December 31, we did not go out dining and dancing. We ordered in Chinese food and we finally got a chance to play our new Lego board game, Heroica. My son LOVED it. He thought it was hilarious and he was preoccupied with collecting all the gold pieces on the board. My husband said it'd be a perfect vehicle for introducing kids to RPGs like D&D - all you'd have to do is keep the same characters and the loot you gain in between games. My son read the comic that accompanied the game. My daughter named all the characters. We played three games - the scroll, the helmet, and the goblin king. My barbarian won the scroll round. Hubby's knight won the helmet round. Despite the fact that I beat the goblin king, I lost health and the knight snuck into the throne spot to steal my victory. Here are some photos of my barbarian's goblin-slaying spree and the knight's win.

Sir James takes the goblin king throne!

Sir James gets the helmet - Hudge the barbarian witnesses it.

Hudge smash all bad trolls!