Fun and games

Today has been a relaxing day of games around here.  We were invited to join some friends for the day and it was very tempting - they have have kind of adopted us/let us adopt them as our "here" family since our family lives so far away - and it is always fun to get together with them.  Anyway we had decided just to hang around home and just spend time together.

Todd and most of the kids enjoy long, strategic games (they like other games, too).  So they started out with Settler's of Catan this morning, after breakfast while I worked on lunch.  They finished that game right before lunch and then while Garrett and I took a nap in the recliner, they started (and are still playing - more than 3 hours later) a game of Risk.   After our nap, Garrett and I challenged each other to a couple of games of Candyland - each of us got to win one game. And I started on supper.

While I was peeling potatoes and listening to them talk about conquering each others countries and wiping them out, I got a picture in my mind of my Grandpas, many years ago when I was pretty little.  They were sitting at a little table at the bottom of the stairs at my Fox Grandparents' house playing a game of chess.  It was a quiet, serious, brow wrinkling game - I remember them playing chess together like that more than once.  And I had to laugh, because when their great grandchildren at this house play chess, it is anything but quiet or serious.  All the kids gather around the chess board and help cheer the players on.  The chess players come to life and you hear yells of, "Off with your head!!" and other equally cruel things.  But it is fun to think of them enjoying and playing the same game their great grandfathers played.