Board Games

This past weekend our friends, the Merrills, stopped by for a visit. I am always impressed by the Merrills because as a family they love games. All kinds of games: outdoor jousting tournaments, athletic contests, games of wit and strategy, and of course, simple board games. Whenever I spend time with their family I think, we need to play more games.

So, on Sunday afternoon I pulled out Trouble, the board game with the dice that 'pops' in the middle. The object of the game is to get all your pegs around to your "Home" before others get theirs home. Now, in the original game, if someone lands on you, your peg has to start all over. We immediately disregarded this rule because it led to hurt feelings and made the game last forever. So, now for us, this game is just a race to the end.

I played the game several times with Spencer and he loved it. Then I went upstairs to work on my lesson. Chelsea then played the game with Spencer. Now, most parents know that four year olds don't really cheat, they are just sometimes generous in their counting. If Spencer ever added an extra jump when I was playing with him I either intentionally didn't notice or I nicely said, "No honey, I think you are here."

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Chelsea has not yet picked up on these nuances. So everytime Spencer would overcount on his behalf she would get mad. Then he got mad back. Then she accused him of cheating. Then he accused her of being 'the meanest sister ever,' and so forth. Carter came over to intervene and unfortunately only made the situation worse. It was a case of everyone accusing and misunderstanding each other. By the time I went downstairs Spencer was having a full-fledged Donald Duck meltdown. It looked something like this:

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I remember now why our family doesn't play many games. Maybe we just don't have enough practice. Or maybe we just have the wrong personalities. Either way, for our family, Trouble is apparently appropriately named.