The Great Game Christmas of 2009

We had a lot of fun this Christmas in Cowboy Country with Linus's family. We saw longhorn cattle, got to choose the cow we wanted our steak from...Just kidding. But we did see the longhorns and eat succulent steak all in one day. We also had a Persian feast, during which I learned the best way to make mast-o-khiar (cucumber and mint yoghurt) is by grating the cucumber into the yoghurt. (I also liked that we used dried mint instead of fresh mint. I like the fresh mint, but I can never get it as small as I want it, and so it's usually too overpowering.) Anyway, we also had a lovely Christmas Eve and Christmas dinners, and lots of good food at everything from Cajun to Greek to Mexican and of course barbecue restaurants. We got to see an exciting high-school girls basketball game, go ice skating, and enjoy a White Christmas...That's right, I meant white. (The ice skating was inside, don't get too excited.) And mostly, we just had a great time seeing all of Linus's family.

But, the theme for this Christmas seemed to be games. It was indeed the Great Game Christmas of 2009. Not only did we play all sorts of games while we were there, we also quadrupled the number of games we owned before December. (A couple of them were birthday gifts I gave to Linus.) Thanks everyone.

So, everyone and anyone who is interested in coming over for a game night with us, you now have a lot of choices:

1. Pit -- the classic fast-paced card game in which you try to corner the market on a particular commodity. Ours is the updated version, so instead of cornering corn or oats, you're trying to corner petroleum and diamonds or something like that. Very fun game. The seminary students enjoyed the "scripture mastery" version as well.

2. Khet -- an Egyptian mirrors game in which you use mirrors and lasers to try to light up the other person's pharaoh. We still haven't officially played the game yet, but Linus is eager.

3. Apples to Apples -- one of my personal favorites that is definitely a game of knowing people more than one would think. Always hilarious. (Thank you, Linus!)

4. Ruk-Shuk -- the game of rock balancing. Seriously difficult, but entertaining. You have to build various rock formations and you get more points based on the difficulty of the formation and the rocks themselves that you have to build with (they aren't all flat or smooth). Plus they tell you the origin of each formation, which is interesting.

5. Wit's End -- a game in which you're challenged with various types of questions from trivia to "one of these things is not like the other" to analogies to sequencing to just about anything. It's the type of game you might win one minute with no difficulty and be completely stumped the next time you play. I guess that's why they call it "Wit's End".

6.-7. 10 Days in Europe -- build a 10-day itinerary through Europe and whoever completes their trip first wins. I love this game. Linus's mom and I played it several times together. She loved it enough to buy it herself, as well as the 10 Days in Africa and 10 Days in the USA. I went ahead and bought the 10 Days in the USA when I saw it for half-price somewhere after Christmas. Great game with a surprising amount of strategy and thought needed. Anyway, you get to know the geography really well. Now I just need Africa and Asia...(That's all they've made so far.)

8. Mexican Train Game -- a classic and fun dominoes game. Basically all that means is that we now have a pretty and colorful dominoes set with its own fancy case and a set-up for playing Mexican Train with the dominoes (although you don't necessarily need anything more than regular dominoes to play the game). If you've never played it before it's really fun. This was another one that we played a lot together this Christmas, and it was always a hit.

and finally....

9. Sports Resort -- getting more exercise this winter than we ever have before!

Now we just need people to play our games with. Can anyone come out to play?

Editor's note: I forgot to put down Farkel, a really fun dice game that's so compact I missed it when I was taking inventory. So Farkel makes 10 new games!