It's all Fun and Games

My son is a professional athlete. His salary is $100,000 per year. He didn't go to college but he has a wife and four baby girls. He retired as a millionaire. 

And he did all of this by age three!

We played "The Game of Life" the other day, and Greg beat us all. Mercilessly. Look at that game face.  

It seems that our little family has become quite the gamers. Not video games. (Okay, maybe that too.) But I'm talking about bored games. I mean board games. We LOVE board games. There might have been a little brainwashing involved though.

Let's go back twenty years or so. I am the youngest of five kids. We had a lot of fun together.  I loved board games. But as the youngest child, my siblings weren't exactly fighting over who got to play with Little Sis. But one of my sisters was sometimes willing to play Monopoly with me... according to HER terms. You see, if she was going to give me the honor of playing with her, there were certain unwritten rules that I had to live by. Such as: 

1) Kristen is not allowed to buy Boardwalk or Park Place.

2) Kristen is not allowed to buy a railroad.

3) Kristen is not allowed to buy any of the green, yellow, red, or pink properties. 

4) Kristen is not allowed to have the most money at any given time. 

5) Kristen is allowed to buy houses but not hotels.

6) Kristen is not allowed to be the car. Or the shoe. Or the thimble. Or the...

7) If Kristen has a Get Out of Jail Free card and her sister goes to jail, she has to hand it over for free.

I think you get the idea. 

If any of these rules were broken at any time, the game was over. The end. Guess how many times I won. 

(I imagine that my "unnamed sister" isn't happy with me right now. Let's just call this payback. And I love you. And please forgive me. I'll let you have an extra turn?) 

Flash forward to present day. We have our own little brood now. And they play games. They BEG me to play games. (That's where the brainwashing came in. Jonathan was playing Candy Land before he was allowed to eat candy.) So now when the kids ask to play a game, I silently jump for joy, tell them to clean their rooms first, and then we play. We PLAY! We have a nice stash of little kid games. I'm happy playing anything as long as we play by the rules. (Nicole is unbeatable at Memory. I dare you.) 

Then came the fateful day when Ben decided that Jonathan is old enough to play Monopoly. Just the three of us, for hours, following the real rules. I think it's the first time I ever played a full game.

Look at that board. Do you see what I see? Hotels! The properties with hotels - yeah, those are mine.  I sent one of the kids to fetch the camera so I could take a picture right before I bankrupted my dear husband and son. (I'm pretty sure this makes me a bad winner.) I've been waiting thirty-one years for this!

That's right: Boardwalk, Park Place, Railroads, Utilities, whatever I wanted.  There's not much cash left sitting there but it was invested wisely. I won!!!  Look at the top left corner of the picture. I even have a spare "Get Out of Jail Free" card. Take THAT.

 Everybody was so happy for me!

Okay, enough about my Monopoly awesomeness. (Since I've only won once, ever.)

I am really just grateful to have such great kids. We have a lot of fun playing games together. It's not always peaceful while we play, but we're learning to take turns and help each other.  We're learning that it's really fun to win, and we can also be happy for other people when we lose. There are times when Ben and I take it easy on the kids, (aka almost letting them win), but for the most part we try to challenge them. Sometimes I think that letting kids win every time with no effort is just as mean as playing with somebody and giving them no hope of winning.  (Ahem, love you Sis.)  Don't you think?

At least our kids know that when they beat us, they REALLY beat us.

So I think that in reality we're winning the game of Life. We may not end up with professional athletes, and hopefully Zach will learn not to cry if he has twin baby girls instead of boys, and hopefully Greg won't celebrate his victories by running over all the people that are left on the road...  Anyway, we're having fun. Come play with us sometime!