This year my son, B_______, his wife, S__________, and their 18 month old daughter, Little Miss E__________, arrived for our traditional family game and appetizer night on New Year’s Eve.
APP NIGHT FUN
After all the greetings and such, I discovered a row of my granddaughter’s duck collection on the counter, supervising the tamales in the nearby pot. Too funny!
Lots of healthy with a few less healthy to provide a range for the more adventurous, with lots of options for the more health conscious.
Although the Chili Fig Spread is less healthy, the small round container on the cutting board are honeycomb pieces, very healthy!
Healthy shrimp paired with a whole food cocktail sauce I found.
However, my favorite sauce is the whole food tomatillo guacamole sauce!
Most exciting is this batch of healthy fudgy brownies I baked for the first time that afternoon.
My hubby was completely elated that he can now enjoy a sweet dessert that is healthy!
Meanwhile Glenn Miller music began to swing, prompting my granddaughter to start dancing!
Loving to dance, her favorite song is Glenn Miller’s Chattanooga Choo Choo!
That’s my girl!
GAME NIGHT SELECTION
After a lot of fun chatting over snacks, we began the game night with a brand new game I had found at Shenandoah National Park last October.
Although I actually bought it for my oldest granddaughter (age 5) in mind, I knew it was too sophisticated for her.
However, she’s a quick study, having somehow learned all her addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division tables at the age of 3.
Her daddy’s side of the family attribute that ability to genetics. 😉
Therefore, I presented the game as a family gift on Christmas, as a promise for us to check out on New Years.
If all the families are present, I suggested we play as families to switch things up.
That way the parents can guide their kiddo to make what decisions they can and be part of the action, without being overwhelmed.
Everyone else thought that a great idea, but my daughter and her family were not able to attend on this evening.
TREKKING THE NATIONAL PARKS BOARD GAME
Curiously, B______________ and S____________ suggested the new game, since learning its peculiarities would be easier with fewer people.
B_________ sussed out all the rules and details, since he’s always been naturally inclined to those details and the patient teaching of us trying to keep all the new details straight.
Meanwhile Little Miss E___________ dug out all the toys, settling on a take apart car that she brought to me.
Settling in my lap, she kept me occupied by helping with the car’s assembly and reassembly while the game ensued.
SO sweet to hold this little one and watch her grow…I wouldn’t change this for the world!
Throughout the game, my attention was more on enjoying Little Miss E____________ to keep her occupied, so her Mommy and Daddy could have a break and focus on the game.
At some points, this meant I’d sit on the floor to play different adventures with her until my name was called to take my turn.
Thus, I took the longest to learn the game, while my determination of strategy was moot.
Nevertheless, we all had a great laugh at Little Miss E_______’s own strategy to distract Grandma, and I still learned a lot.
Throughout, we had fun commenting on the different parks we had adventured to and exclaimed over surprises learned.
At the end of the day, or night, we totally deemed the boardgame worthy of future family game nights.
Since my son won the game, he wrote his name inside the box lid, which has been a tradition of ours for years, learned in a book I blogged about here.
MONOPOLY OUTER BANKS STYLE
The next game was breaking open the Monopoly Outer Banks style, which I had bought on a recent vacation.
We had so much fun reliving fun memories from our separate trips to this lovely place.
Unlike with the San Antonio version we played, this Outer Banks version was totally spot on with property listings, etc.
Well…except the tokens should have been a flip flop, a light house, a sea star, a boat, a horse, etc.
Anyway, my son won this game too…which is also traditional in our family since he turned 13.
Before that I won most of the games!
NEW YEAR ARRIVAL
In the middle of Monopoly, we watched the New Year arrive…
How about our Little Miss E__________ filling in her cowboy boots? =)
Although I had noisemakers, we determined them too loud for Little Miss E______________, so B___________ presented his quieter surprise, a dark chocolate orange for smashing!
An hour later, as we wrapped up Monopoly, Texas entered the New Year!
That was so much fun to build more happy memories with this long time family tradition.
For more photos of our New Years Eve Game Nights, check my Flickr set here.
