Family Game Night

When the girls started school this year our lives got VERY busy.  They have activities every night of the week except Thursday night.  It is important for us to have family time though so we have adjusted our schedule to accommodate all the activities.  I make a full breakfast every morning so we can be together as a family.  Jason and the girls eat while I get lunches and backpacks prepared.  They eat at the kitchen island though so even though I am not having breakfast I am part of the conversations.  Mondays and Tuesdays the girls usually eat dinner separately.  Sofia eats her dinner on the road between soccer and swimming and Ali when she gets home from the gym.  Tuesday is also a split dinner with Sofia before practice and Ali after practice.  Wednesday we generally eat as a family but it is a late dinner at 8pm so there isn't a long relaxing chit chatty meal.  Thursday however is family game night.  There are no activities to go to and the kids can take the bus home from school.  They complete any homework and then play with each other until Jason comes home.  We order pizza and play a game.  Each week we take turns on who gets to choose the game.  So far we have played, Sorry!, Parcheesi, Monopoly and Scattergories.  It is really a lot of fun.  The girls are at an age now that they can play the games on their own once the directions have been explained.  We knew they could play Sorry! and Parcheesi (just a more complicated version of Sorry!) but we weren't sure how Monopoly or Scattergories would turn out.  They absolutely loved Monopoly.  It was great because they have to think about what to buy and how much money they have.  They have to figure out how to pay people rent and count the rent they collect and give correct change.  It is really great for their math skills.  We played Scattergories last night and we thought they would bag it after two turns but we ended up playing 9 rounds.  They had a lot of blank spaces but it didn't seem to bother them.  The fun part of the game is seeing what people come up with and I was surprised at some of the answers the girls had because they were words that had never crossed my mind.  At times they were in categories in which I didn't have an answer.  Next week it is back to Ali's choice....last I heard she was going to choose Monopoly again but we will have to wait and see.