games

When I read through my blog I realize I tend to focus on Leah's current stage, and what we are leaving behind.  Which is natural I suppose, she is my last baby and it is bittersweet to leave those precious baby and toddler years behind.  However, there are also lots of amazing things about having older kids, and playing games is one of them for me.

There are many board and card games I love to play, but scrabble tops the list.  And I especially love playing now with my new deluxe scrabble I received for Christmas from Kyle.  I'm overboard a tad bit on the crazy side when it comes to keeping the tiles all perfectly lined up.  On our old board I would spend way too much time straightening out tiles.  Now with the deluxe version everything stays in place which is oh so nice.  Yes, these are the things that make me happy.

One of my favourite things about Kyle getting older is being able to play a full game with him.  Real games like scrabble, backgammon and chess.  Don't get me wrong, I've played my fair share of candyland and hi-ho-cherryo.  Although I will admit Leah gets much less game time than Kyle and Jillian at the same age - it's fun to be the third kid with parents who have already played candyland too many times to count.  I do enjoy playing games with Jillian, and she's great at Uno which is another good game to play.  But playing a real game of scrabble with a worthy opponent is definately a perk of having an older kid (too bad it comes along with a tween attitude!).  It's interesting to see the vast difference between Kyle and Leah's ages, the 7 year age gap will be nothing once they are adults but right now it's huge.  I do love the age spread of my children and getting to parent these different stages at the same time.

When we play scrabble it's a toss up as to who wins, Kyle is quite good at using those extra point squares.  Recently we even had a game where all the tiles were used which was rare, we often have 1 or 2 leftover at the end. 

* all words on this board have been verified in the official scrabble players dictionary...no real scrabble player plays without the official dictionary!