Awaking to the results of another winter storm of sleet and ice, we watched it melt away by midday.
With 20 inches of snow for Christmas, and sleet and ice for New Years, we are learning that winter in Virginia is much colder than San Antonio, Texas!
Now that the kids’ snow fort has melted, we turned our activities to game day with great food!
Dinner on New Year’s Eve is easy…tamales with snacks and cookies, which is like Christmas Eve but less formal.
Also, we play games all night while waiting for the New Year.
Whoever wins the game writes their name in the lid with the year, then the winner gets to choose a new game.
I was so caught up into all the games that I forgot to take pictures, so most of the pictures are from other years…but our snacks and games remain rather constant so I’m including as many as I can find from other years.
NINE MEN’S MORRIS
Beginning the day of games, my son and I played Nine Men’s Morris which he received as a Christmas present from his sister, who bought it in Colonial Williamsburg.
I had never played this before.
SCRABBLE
I had a word in the upper left corner that got triple word score with letters with high points that represented how we felt that night…{{{yawn}}}.
Everyone was laughing.
Since I forgot to take a picture of that, here’s one from 2007.
Read all about how I change up the rules for educational purposes here. 😉
SNACKS
Snacks above from 2013, since I forgot to take pictures, and not to worry, the yummy tamales are on the stove top just beyond the photo.
I found some from Harris Teeter that they source from Texas which are delicious!
BLOKUS
Blokus is a great strategy game, pictured in the header from 2007.
Influenced by Colonial Williamsburg, my kids announced they have named the colors.
As they handed me the yellow tiles, I asked who that was. They grinned and said Lafayette! 😉
Blue is Washington, red is Cornwallis and green is Tarleton.
In the end, Washington won and Lafayette came in second!
If Lafayette knew, he’d be pleased to hear that! 😉
MONOPOLY
Earlier this year we studied oil barons, railroad tycoons, the rise and fall of the stock market, and monopolies…which suddenly made this game more meaningful!
Although the kids understood the textbook definition of the term, they did not know what a monopoly was.
So, I purchased an old-fashioned version of the game for a family Christmas present, in the name of education…since I had tossed our falling apart version when we moved from Texas.
HAIL TO THE CHIEF
This is a great game that I bought for my son years ago in Texas. Read all about it here.
PRAYING THE NEW YEAR IN
Now that we no longer live in San Antonio, we can’t see the optimistic rise of the new number for the new year on the Tower of America’s.
And now that we get ALL the news of Washington DC since it’s in our backyard, we added a new tradition to our list…we prayed the New Year in. No matter where we live or our circumstances, that is a good idea.
