I love board games. I remember playing Candy Land with my friends when I was a little kid (and I cheated hard core by stacking the deck in my favour), and having game nights as a family when I was older. Now I have fond memories of those family game nights, my parents however would describe it differently. My brother would win all the time and I would cry because I lost. That pretty much sums it up, but I still love that we had those nights together.

At supper tonight Stefan mentioned to me that he wanted to play Settlers before The Walking Dead came on, and Capri got really excited and wanted to play a game. Since the only games we own are Settlers and Cranium we decided to make our own game. Stefan grabbed a piece of cardboard and drew all the spots on and added SUPER BLOCKS, and I made a quick dice from a block that goes with the girls train set and some paper. We found random objects to be our game pieces and we played the game 3 or 4 times before bedtime.

The girls had so much fun. The three super blocks that you can land on are, “Everyone has to dance”, “Everyone has to Sing”, and “Everyone run the loop” (the loop is the wall between our kitchen and living room).

It was such a good time, and we didn’t let the excuse that we didn’t have a board game to play as a family stop us. We acted fast and made something up and the girls loved it.

Take some time this week to play a game with your kids. Capri is 3.5 and Payson is almost 2 and they both really enjoyed our little game. They loved running the loop (which we somehow landed on many times), and we got to act silly when we would dance or sing. If you have time you could even make a pretty looking game with coloured paper and fancy pens, but when you only have a little bit of time before bedtime a sharpie and a piece of cardboard will do the trick.

Also I am trying to take full advantage of the self timer app on my phone so we can get some family pictures. I use this free app for my iphone and it works great for what I need.