Bonding Over Board Games

Spending time together as a family doesn’t have to be a big expensive event. You don’t have to go to the movies, out to the mall, or even out to eat. All you need to do to have a fun family night together is to get the board games out. Every family has them in the closet collecting dust right? I remember we had a stack of them in our closet. Growing up I fondly remember playing games with my dad and sister. We had a game night quite often and it kept us together. Of course we argued, and she still says that I cheated but it was the perfect family bonding experience arguments and all.

My husband and I love to play board games together. We played them nightly together before we had children. Now that we have children we have a family game night. We play all kinds of games, Uno, Minotauraus, Monopoly, Don’t Break The Ice, The list goes on and on. It’s funny as I sit here writing this post because tonight was one of those nights. My daughter requested Candy Land and my husband introduced them to a new game Triominos. We played two games, which is big for us. Miles has grown so much this last year because it was just a year ago we couldn’t even make it through one game of Candy Land. He’s gained patience and the ability to take turns. Plus they’ve both learned about patterns, counting, and how to have good sportsmanship even though we don’t take score yet. We’re trying to just teach them that’s it’s fun to play games together. So we play for fun.

My hope is that we continue to bond over board games over the years. As they get older we’ll be able to play more complicated games and game night will be longer. I’m sure we’ll continue to have arguments and laugh at the same time. The important thing is that we’re making family memories together.

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This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of LEGOSystems. The opinions expressed by me do not necessarily reflect the view of the LEGO Brand.

Wordless Wednesday Family Game Night

Family Game Night Bishop

Free Tombstone Pizza Coupon With Hasbro Game Purchase

Are you in the habit of playing games as a family yet? Have you seen my weekly post about playing games together on our Family Game night? Check it out, I strongly believe that playing games and spending time together as a family is very important. I also believe that sitting down together as a family to eat dinner is important and we do that every night. Thanks to Hasbro and Tombstone Pizza, Family game night just gained a pizza. YUM!

monopoly revolution game play

For a limited time when you purchase, any Hasbro game at your local retailer like Target, then visit the "Special Offer" tab at FamilyGameNight.com to download a mail in offer form to receive a coupon for a FREE (up to $7.01) Tombstone Pizza. Whether you choose MONOPOLY or SCRABBLE, Original or Garlic Bread, head to your local retailer before this offer ends on April 30. Visit FamilyGameNight.com or on Facebook for more information and full offer details.

 

I received nothing for this post, just thought you might want to know! We’re into saving money at my house right now!

Family Game Night This Week We’re Playing Mega Bloks Dominos Build Game

Thanks to Mega Bloks and Team Mom we received a new game to play and enjoy as a family, Mega Bloks Dominos Build Game.

image

imageThe Mega Bloks Company has grown out of just building blocks, having puzzles, games and more at their disposal. Using all of their wisdom gained over the years they put together a fun game of matching and building, Mega Bloks Dominos. In Mega Bloks Dominos children learn to have patience, taking turns and waiting to build the animal of their choice, elephant, lion, bear or giraffe. The first time we played, we made sure that we continued the game until everyone got to build their animal. Perfectly made for a family of four, mom, dad, Zoe and Miles can all play at one time.

Set up was easy enough for the kids to help with.

Directions/How to Play Mega Bloks Domino

imageEveryone picks and animal card. Then the youngest player gets to pick the starting domino. Then everyone draws two tiles. The youngest player then needs to decide if they have a matching edge to the card they played. If they do then they get to have one Mega Blok building piece for their chosen animal. If they do not then it is the next person’s turn. Go clockwise until everyone has a turn to play and then keep going until the animals are all built.

Attention spans of little ones is very short, which makes this a good game because playtime is very quick. We can usually finish a game with my son who has the shortest attention span of us all. It’s a great fun and easy to play family game.

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We received samples to facilitate this review.

Family Game Night This Week We’re Playing Monopoly Revolution

Monopoly is my favorite game. I have over 3 dozen different varieties of the game. Actually the total probably comes closer to 5 dozen, yes I’m a glutton for the family game of Monopoly. After Christmas and at garage sales is the best time to stock up on Monopoly games if you’re a collector like me, and Target we struck gold. We purchased Monopoly Revolution for close to 8.00 and it has been an explosion of fun. The best description I can give is Monopoly Revolution is made for our ADD generation.

Monopoly Revolution 

The basic idea of Hasbro’s Monopoly stands, you pick your game piece out of six different characters and instead of doling out money you get a Monopoly Revolution Bankcredit card. That’s right charge it baby, until you reach your limit. Now, the directions are in the box, but my husband and I always play by our own house rules. Just because we don’t like to auction off properties, but I think the official rules say that every time you land on a property you either buy it or auction it off, so here is how we play. Roll the dice and move that many spaces. Buy it. Place your credit card in the red section of the Monopoly Revolution Bank controller and make your payment. Continue with regular monopoly rules. If you land on a property that is owned and you owe rent then your card goes in the red and the property owner goes in the green. Then the calculator subtracts the total from the renter and adds the money to the owner. Just don’t forget to grab your property deed.

Now, remember how I said this game is for a generation that is always having things flash before our eyes? Well, the calculator has a mind of it’s own. Occasionally to move the game along it will make you take a chance!

monopoly revolution game playChance happens just like any other Monopoly, you usually have to pay for something unexpectedly. The chance belongs to the person that last placed their card in the machine. So if you are the last person to pass go, or the last person to pay rent then you’re taking a chance if the machine starts singing the chance song. Chance on the board is the most challenging part of the game. Because the board is broken up into four quadrants, each quadrant is a different symbol. If you are in the same quadrant as the person landing on chance then you have to participate in the chance as well. Yeah it could be good or bad, making sure to keep the game moving along and interesting.

Are you confused yet? Monopoly Revolution is a fun quick version of Monopoly. Game Time goes quickly in this version as everything seems to happen faster. Of course, my husband and I have just been stopping when we’re done and using the Calculator to tally up who has the most net worth. he’s won both times so far. We have yet to play until someone goes bankrupt. Maybe tomorrow night will be the night!

What do you play with your spouse?

Cozy Nautica Night In With The Family

Child wearing Nautica clothingThe Bishop family, that’s us, loves to play games together. We have quite a collection of games, video games, board games, kids games and adult games. No, not the dirty kind, I just mean games that our 2 and 4 year old can’t quite play yet. Like Monopoly, and you should see my wall of Monopoly games. I think I have about 80 different versions of Monopoly. So I was quite excited to buy the new Monopoly Revolution when it was on sale at Target. It’s Monopoly for an ADD generation like we all are. Just in case you’re about to fall asleep the game beeps at you and someone has to take a chance. I’ll family folding clothestell you more about that later. My kids favorite games right now are Cootie, Don’t break the ice and Chutes and Ladders. For a parent it can be a LONG evening playing these games over and over again, and just finishing one game of Cootie can drive an adult nuts. I could write a post just on trying to get a two year old and a four year old to sit still and make their Cootie following the instructions and taking turns. AHHHHH!!!

 

Slinky TimeSo, to take a night off from the insanity of having more fun than an adult can handle, yes that is completely literal, we had a fun cozy night of folding clothes listening to music and dancing in the clothing hamper. Yes this was a fun night in at the Bishop house. Boy in Nautica Active Wear Sports ClothingI had five loads of laundry to get through and wasn’t about to do it all by myself you know!

We had dress up time, and lots of laughter as Zoe tried on Daddy’s button up shirts. We also had fun playing with slinky. The kids love Slinky right now. Slinky can be tied around the dog, used to capture mommy and force her to be ticked by two little munchkins, and used to just drive dad up the wall.

 

 

Family photo

The Nautica Clothing pictured in these photos gave us a cozy night in and is extremely comfortable to wear. The clothing has been holding up in the washing machine to my picky standards (excellent rating, no shrinking or fading) and is cute. I received compliments on my long sweatshirt, and love how cozy I feel outside in the cold temperatures. Zoe has been very excited to wear her Nautica Active Wear to school and Miles wanted to wear it to bed, which is a statement at just how comfortable the clothing was. All of the clothing featured can be found in the Nautica Activewear collection for each sex and age group.

Apparel and activity as discussed in this post was provided by Nautica, but Nautica is not a sponsor, administrator, or involved in any other way with this post. All opinions expressed in the post are my own and not those of Nautica. All apparel as seen in this post can be purchased on Nautica.com except for the green button up shirt Zoe was wearing.

Family Game Night, We’re playing Ratuki this week!

Ratuki

ratuki cardsIn high school one of my favorite games to play was speed. Are you familiar with that game. You use a deck of cards or two, and then you place the cards in order from 1 to A or A to 1 depending if they are going up or down. Ratuki is a card game played the same way except you only go up and down from 1 to 5 and you have four stacks to play from at one time. You have five cards in your hand and you draw every time you place a card and the first person that gets rid of all of their cards. A Ratuki card is wild and may be used at any time. Then when you are out of cards you have to yell, “Ratuki”.

As part of a resolution to have a Family Game Night, we’re trying new games together. I had a lot of fun playing this game with my husband. He and I love playing games together and before my blog we used to play a lot! Of course, that’s also before we had any kids too! Where does all the time go. Our goal this year is to have more family time with the kids and spend more time playing games together just the two of us. I hope to have a review of Monopoly Revolution up soon!

Karen Deerwester (relationship expert) reminds us that “laughter is the foundation for a resilient happy family” … “Family Game Nights renew families and encourage us to be our best and have fun!” She has 5 tips for us on how to de-stress and play together.

 

  1. Don’t over-schedule. Choose a night that works for the entire family and enjoy un-plugged fun with Hasbro games
  2. Give yourself a break and plan for a takeout dinner to save time for games during Family Game Night
  3. Get the children involved by having them choose games — they’ll be excited to participate!
  4. Bring home new games to inspire unexpected fun
  5. Reward the family for playing by giving special awards, privileges and treats

We received a copy of Ratuki card game from Hasbro for review.

How to Use Hasbro Vintage Star Wars Action Figures to Make a Monopoly Game

Hasbro Sent us one Han Solo action figure this year to get me to advertise about their release of Vintage Star Wars Action Figures, well that brought up some very fond memories of what my husband gave me for Christmas years ago.

 

IMG_7272I love Han Solo, so my husband bought every single Han Solo action figure he could find to make me the Monopoly of my dreams. Oh, have I ever mentioned that I’m addicted to the game Monopoly and we have over 50 versions of the game, and yes, My Han Solo edition that my husband made is my favorite version of Monopoly!

This is basically what he did.

He used the movie, the actual movie to capture high quality graphics to create game board. I don’t have the game board anymore or I would show you a picture of it. The board didn’t survive moving and storage, but we do have the digital copies somewhere so my husband can recreate it for me sometime.

He spend hours hunting down the action figures about 7 years ago. It looks like Star Wars action figures are a lot easier to find right now verses 5 years ago. But anyhow, he  found about 10 different characters and half of them were all different versions of Han Solo.

He found some acrylic frames and used those as the boards for the action figures to stand on. He hot glued them down.

acrylic framesStar Wars Action Figures

He printed up chance, and community chest cards and called them Fate of the Galaxy and Pilot’s Maneuver.  He used beads as currency, and wooden pieces as houses and really cool carved pieces as the hotels. IMG_7273

He also put a great amount of detail into the Monopoly property cards.

Monopoly property cards

I can not tell you how much my husband and I love to play games together, it’s really sad to say that I spend way more time on the computer than with him. Which is why I’m such a strong supporter of creating a family game night in your family. Then you all force yourselves to stop everything that you are doing and be a family, make happy memories and just have a great time together.

If you have gifts to check off on your holiday shopping list or are in search for fun entertainment as your family gathers during the yuletide season, look no further than the game aisle. On December 5, the USA Weekend to had exclusive coupons offering $5 off a great selection of Hasbro games including brands that you know and love, such as Scrabble, Twister, Trivial Pursuit, Sorry!, Pictureka!, and more. And starting December 6, visit www.familygamenight.com to access these coupons online. It’s not too late to get a few coupons!

I received two action figures in exchange for this post. I donated one to the Tweetdrive in Seattle and kept the other for my Han Solo edition Monopoly game.

Friday Family Game Night, Do You Play

My husband and I have always been big time game players. We love playing games together and we’ve just started getting games for the kids to play. I couldn’t pass up a free game, so I went and picked up Connect Four at Target. This is the newest addition to our Family Game Night.

 

 

They are learning co-operation, taking turns and how to take things as they go. I just love it. Maybe next week we can have a video of Candy Land.

Fitness Friday – Is Hasbro’s Scrabble in Family Game night Considered Fitness?

 

Are Scrabble marathons considered Exercise because if they are then I exceeded all my goals. This is what I’ve been doing whenever my husband has been home.

 

Photo Taken by Team Xbox.

We’re in the middle of a game of scrabble right now. It has been cutting into my productivity of my blog as well. I had hoped to post a few more giveaways this week. I guess I’ll have to try and get my but in gear this weekend, but that means more time with DH so I doubt it will happen. Maybe that’s why I’m so tired.

I did cut down on the latte’s I only had one even though today I really really wanted to get another one. Thank goodness I was able to tell myself, it’s after four, if you have one now you’ll be up all night. ;-)

I think I’m under 150, but I expect the scale to go back up, it’s just not enough to count, I’ve been hovering around the same number for two months, so I know the only way to change is to take drastic measures. I know that exercise gives you more energy, there is just something about cold and wet that makes me want to stay indoors.

Oh, I should say that I’ve been using my stair case. It’s been great. Which reminds me of a giveaway I need to go write up. It’s a great product that will help you exercise too.