I promised the kids a game night if they cleaned their rooms without resistance every day for a week. In a previous week, Sam had earned ice cream, but Hallie wasn't on board that week. But last week, they faithfully cleaned them, every morning, as asked (I'm not so confident as to expect them to do it without any reminders. Not yet. Not these kids. But someday.)
The kids each picked two games they wanted us to play. Hallie chose Monopoly Jr. and Apples to Apples Kids. Sam chose Chess and Mario Party 8 Wii. I made pizza and brownies (in a game-night theme, tic-tac-toe, with marshmallow "o's" and peanut butter chip "x's") and served juice (a rarity with meals around here.) The M&M's were prizes.
We ate in the livingroom while we played our first game, Monopoly Jr. Even R got to join us, in her booster seat. Though she didn't join in the actual game playing, she did get ahold of a couple of my Monopoly Dollar bills and smear them with pizza sauce. :)
Sam won Monopoly, got a prize of 10 M&Ms, then we moved on to Apples to Apples. If you haven't played it, you should. We all love the game. We add an extra element to the game at the end, by reading our remaining (or won) cards out loud. For the green cards that we won, we say "I am..." (Some in my hand were "I am... noisy, helpful and sharp.") And for the red, we say "I like..." ("I like... Pizza, Apple Pie and Bumblebees." ) Not the best examples, but it's really quite funny as each person reads their own. I won that game, collected my M&M's and moved on to the championship round... Chess! Sam and I played Chess for our tie-breaker. He did great, as usual, but I was the victor, collected MORE M&M's, and won the coveted privelege of Controller #1 for the Wii during Mario Party 8.
The kids didn't get to be until 9, but it was a really fun night, and R only woke once (during our raukous Wii playing), fussed a bit and fell back asleep... then slept until 7:30am! It's all about the memories, man.
It's definitely all about the memories. Sounds like some great ones were made! ;-)
Posted by: Cutzi | 02/13/2009 at 02:35 AM
Sounds like a really good time! We don't have a Wii, but we borrowed one over Christmas break and played Mario Party every night. I LOVED it. Because of that game alone, we may get a Wii someday. Glad to hear that R is sleeping better, at least that night she did.
Posted by: Carrie | 02/13/2009 at 05:28 PM
We love game night at our house. Quidler is one of our favorites.
Posted by: Echo | 02/13/2009 at 10:25 PM