Every New Year’s Eve we enjoy snack and game night to bring in the New Year!
To top it off, whoever wins the game writes their name with the year in the box, which creates a fun memory!
Then the winner picks the next game.
Now that we have accumulated so many games, the kids and I squeezing in as many games as possible, so this year we began at midday instead of waiting for sunset!
HAIL TO THE CHIEF
Surprisingly, my daughter chose Hail to the Chief for the first game, instead of her usual favorite, a geography game from her massive collection.
I bought this game for my son a few years ago, knowing he had a goal to one day be president, to restore traditional values to our country.
The object of this game is to answer questions about presidents, while accumulating enough delegate votes to be the party candidate.
Once achieving candidate status, the player rolls the dice to journey through the states, where correct answers about states yields necessary electoral votes.
Once the player achieves enough electoral votes, the race is on to the White House.
The first one who has enough votes and moves across the board and uses the exact number of dots on the dice to land in the White House is the President.
Wanting to extend the game, we added a new rule…second place becomes vice president…which is exactly the way that position was chosen until the twelfth amendment was ratified in 1804.
After a lot of fun reading questions to each other, learning new factoids, and gleaning a new president and vice-president, the winner chose the next game…
SCRABBLE
Since we began playing this game when my kids were young, and we were homeschoolers, I changed a few rules for educational purposes.
At the recommendation of Andrew from IEW, I purchased a spelling/thesaurus pad (seen in photo above) for the kids to use as fun, quick, handy reference for their writing…which I also allow them to use, along with the Webster dictionary, during the game.
Our primary goal was learning in a fun way, while hoping to create the largest puzzle possible, using up all our letters, with winning as our secondary goal.
Thus, we start the game based on whomever is capable of building a word with the most letters, which allows us the best opportunity to have a great puzzle that spreads all over the board.
And the best way to do that is to start our first word with the first letter on the star…which pushes all the answers to the bottom half of the board, severely limiting our game, leaving us with multiple letters with no place to play.
So, I created a rule that the star would be the last letter of the first word, effectively extending our options up and to the left.
When we get down to the dregs of few letters, I allow usage of the Scramble booklet which lists many two-letter words I never heard of before.
Once we attain a winner, the winner put’s their name in the box lid and chooses the next game…but first the remaining players keep playing to see how large we can make the puzzle by using up every single letter.
On this day, only two tiles remained, that we couldn’t figure out where to place them… letters j and g. Can you find a space for them?
After we yielded on j and g, the winner announced that Life in Colonial Williamsburg was the next game.
LIFE IN COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG
Purchasing this game when we visited Colonial Williamsburg a few years ago, we have found it to bring many happy memories…that continue to beckon us to return.
In fact, can we just live in Colonial Williamsburg? {{{sigh}}}
Along with the many fond memories is the great review of our favorite historical era.
NEW YEAR’S EVE SNACKS
By now, we were hungry, since it was time for dinner, which on New Year’s Eve means fun finger foods like we enjoyed on Christmas Eve.
Cheese, meat and crackers, and shrimp…
Cheese sticks and tamales…
Sweets from our cookie factory…(see header photo)
NEW YEAR’S EVE MOVIE
Although the kids and I can just keep playing board games, others like to switch things up with a movie.
Did we have a good recommendation for New Year’s Eve?
Absolutely!
Years ago I stumbled upon Bachelor Mother, a 1939 movie starring Ginger Rogers and David Niven, set during Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
Polly (Ginger Rogers) is a single lady who works in Merlin’s Department Store in New York City selling miniature Donald Ducks.
After unfairly losing her job, she discovers an abandoned baby while walking home, that everyone presumes is her own…including the foundling home who asks the fun-loving son (David Niven) of her former boss to re-employ her with a pay raise.
Confusion and antics galore includes a fun dance contest and the merriment of Christmas and New Years makes for a fun movie!
LIFE
After that, we played Life…which my kids are learning is heavy on chance. With a spin of the wheel our fate is forced upon us with decisions we’d never choose to make…sort of reminiscent of Odysseus.
Nevertheless, the kids have great practice in adding and subtracting dollars…especially whichever one becomes the banker.
Their mental math grows by being the banker and score keeper, rounding out the mental drills in math class.
JENGA
Despite feeling sleepy at 10pm, the kids wanted to see the New Year in, so we chose Jenga to help us stay awake as we wrestled with physics to keep our growing tower from falling.
But once it falls…we’re awake!
We played four rounds of this one before moving on to a new game!
BLOKUS
Since this was our newest game, which I bought for my son this Christmas, we’ve already played it extensively to learn the rules and figure out strategy.
Now the challenge was intense to see who would be the first New Year’s Eve winner for this game!
SAN ANTONIO’S RISING SALUTE TO THE NEW YEAR
After seeing the big apple drop in New York City, I quipped that we had an hour to go to see a positive take San Antonio style!
In preparation for our own midnight moment, I buy noisemakers and confetti poppers, which are handily available on the coffee table.
At midnight Texas time, we watched the elevator rise with the number 8 to the top of the Tower of the Americas in downtown San Antonio, to change out the 2007 to 2008…at which time the skies lit up with fireworks!
Happy New Year everyone!
