A few weeks ago I mentioned buying a game or two to play as a family. One that I recommended was Apples to Apples, which also has a Jr. edition. We had the original version and bought the Jr. edition for Christmas. My daughter (who’s 14) doesn’t know all of the words or people in the original game and thought she would like the Jr. edition better. I just wanted to post a quick update now that we’ve played both.

It’s a very easy game. Every player gets 5 red cards. The red cards are nouns.

The green cards are adjectives.

The judge (players take turns being the judge) draws a green card and places it face up in the middle of the table then the rest of the players choose the word on their red cards that they think best fits the green card and places it face down on the table. We just throw them on the table and the judge really doesn’t know who’s card is whose. If you have some sneaky judges in your family you might want to have them cover their eyes or turn around or something. Then the judge turns the red cards right side up and selects the one they like best.

What makes this game fun is that you never know exactly what the judge is going to pick – the word that is the best match, the exact opposite, their favorite word, the shortest word… If the judge chooses your word you get to keep the green card from that round. The first player to collect 5 green cards wins!

They do have definitions of the words on the bottom of the card. The definitions on the green cards are accurate.

while the ones on the red cards aren’t always very helpful.

I love the Chicken Dance.

My daughter had been asking for Apples to Apples Jr. for a while. She hated getting the cards she didn’t know, like “doing the dishes”. (I’m just kidding, she knows what doing the dishes means, she just doesn’t participate in that activity very often.) It is one of the games we got for Christmas.

We had my husband’s parents and his brother’s family over for dinner the weekend after Christmas. The adults (notice I didn’t say grown ups, there definitely weren’t many grown ups involved) played cards while the kids played Apples to Apples Jr. The kids ranged in age from 10-16. We could hear them laughing in the other room. Eventually the older people switched to Apples to Apples. The kids somehow ended up in our room and we played together. It was FUN! We read the definitions on the words the kids had trouble with but they still played the cards they weren’t sure about.

The next weekend we went to my dad’s for my step sister’s birthday. This time we started out with Apples to Apples Jr. It just wasn’t as much fun. I think because the words are simpler, there aren’t as many opportunities for twisted combinations. We ended up switching to the regular version after the first round.

So, my recommendation? Get Apples to Apples Jr. if you’ve got really young kids or if you think you might have kids playing together. If your kids are a little older, or if most of your playing will involve adults and children together, go with regular Apples to Apples. Just make sure you get one of them. It’s really a fun game, easy to learn and doesn’t take forever to play. You’ll learn some things about each other, too, like who thinks the chicken dance is refined.

When you get it, be sure to come back and tell me what you think!

PS
Check this out! You can print your own cards with family members names or whatever! I’m SO doing this, but don’t tell, I want it to be a surprise.

I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them, I just haven’t ever felt moved to make one – until this year. This year there’s something I want, something I’m willing to work at for a whole year. It has nothing to do with weight, or cleaning, or eliminating a bad habit, or reading the Bible all the way through, or posting on this blog every single day.

November and December are crazy-hectic around here. They are for everyone, I know.  But we’ve got more than the usual holiday parties to deal with. We have a lot of family nearby  – parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins… I’m not complaining. I wouldn’t change it for anything, not even the chance to spend the whole 2 months in Hawaii. (Well, ok, maybe just once, but not every year.) If it was up to me we’d have ALL of our family members living close by. It is hard, though, to find time for everyone, especially around the holidays. We often find ourselves trying to split our time between my mom’s family, my dad’s family and my in-laws. I remember one thanksgiving that we didn’t eat at all. We visited one side of the family in the morning, left the next one when they started to eat and arrived at the last destination just as they were finishing putting everything away.

On top of the normal Thanksgiving/Christmas gatherings we have no less than 10 birthdays in November and December. There are usually at least 2 soccer tournaments (that means 3 or 4 games in a single weekend) and at least one game the rest of the weekends. Add shopping, wrapping and baking to my regular schedule and you might understand why I have moments when I hate this time of year.

It’s exaggerated in November and December, but I do feel overwhelmed and tired almost all of the time. Soccer is an all year thing around here, and just the everyday obligations leave me feeling like I can’t keep up with everything. I don’t enjoy time with my friends and family very often because I’m either too busy or too tired to enjoy it.

That’s what I want to change.

I want to make time to hang out with my kids – they’re getting older and won’t necessarily be living here much longer. I need to take advantage of having them handy while I can.

I want to get together with my extended family more often. We’re so lucky to have most of them close by but we still don’t see some of them more than once a year. Again, I want to do more of this while I can still boss my kids around so that they’ll know and appreciate their family later.

I want to cultivate closer friendships. We have a lot of acquaintances that we like and enjoy spending time with but it doesn’t grow much beyond that because (say it with me) I’m to busy/tired for more.

I want to schedule some alone time with my husband. It’s so easy to live in the same house (and spend every night sitting next to each other on the couch watching TV/surfing the internet) and still wake up one day not knowing each other anymore. I don’t want that to happen to us.

Wow, that’s a lot of wants and I’m feeling a little overwhelmed just thinking about it. But you know what? I spent most of the day today sitting in front of the computer doing a whole lot of nothing. I didn’t even get this posted until after 9 at night. I could have played a game of Clue with my daughter or gone out to lunch with a friend.

While I want to minimize the time I spend on everyday chores, cooking, cleaning, shopping…, what I really need to do is stop wasting time on other things that don’t add anything to my life. That’s going to be harder for me and not as fun. I don’t watch a lot of TV but I do love my internet. It’s like living at the library. I find all kinds of great ideas and learn lots of new things on here. As much as I enjoy that, it’s not important in the long run, not like people.

I don’t expect to be posting next year about how I’ve accomplished everything I talked about today, but I do expect to have eliminated some of the time wasters in my life and, just by making this a priority, I hope I will have spent more time focused on what’s important.

In my house Christmas has always been about the presents. I’m not proud of that, but it’s the truth. As the kids have gotten older and their wants more expensive, it’s been harder and harder to make the underneath part of the tree look full of gifts. This year, more than any other, it won’t be. When you’ve made the holiday about what you’re getting, and you’re suddenly not getting much, it can be a bit of a let down.

I still want Christmas to be a fun day so have come up with a few ideas that will make some great memories and stretch the fun out a bit longer. For more ideas visit Tip Junkie’s “Talk to me Tuesday” which is all about making Christmas more meaningful.

Birthday present for Jesus
First, I must confess that I haven’t been good at making the real meaning of Christmas obvious to my kids. I wasn’t always into that, but even when I was I couldn’t think of a way to incorporate it in a way that was meaningful. I understand the point of the “Birthday Cake for Jesus” but really, all it ever meant to me was that we got cake AND presents on Christmas.

This year my church did a series on “Simple Christmas” all about making Christmas simple, meaningful, less about stuff. They posted several ideas but this one’s my favorite:

“The first present under the tree is a present for Jesus – it is a shoebox with a slit in the top. Years ago we had a discussion with the kids . . . what would Jesus want for his birthday? We decided that He would want us to show God’s love to other people. So, each night we discuss who and how we showed God’s love today and we write down our “gift” to Jesus and put them in the box. On Christmas morning or sometimes Christmas Eve, we read them and marvel at all the good we were able to do – all the ‘gifts’ we gave to Jesus for His birthday. The kids get quite motivated to show God’s love and start their day brainstorming ideas. It is a blast. We’ve kept some of our entries over the years, too – fun to see what the kids did and what we adults did!”

My kids are too old now and would just roll their eyes at me if I tried to do this, but if you start when your kids are younger I’ll bet it’ll be a tradition that will last even when they’re big and mouthy like mine.

HIDE A PICKLE
I don’t know where this started. Some say Germany, some say not. I say “Who cares?” In my family, my mom and my sisters started this a few years ago. What you do is buy a pickle ornament like this:

I know, it’s ugly. It’s a pickle, what do you expect? On Christmas Eve, when the kids are in bed, hide the pickle way back in the tree where it’ll be hard to find. The first kid to find the pickle gets… an extra present, a special treat, to open the first present, bragging rights, whatever you want. It’s a fun, weird Christmas tradition and it’ll give the kids something to do besides open presents.

MAKE YOUR COOKIES ON CHRISTMAS DAY
I usually intend to make cookies for our neighbors before Christmas. I buy the ingredients, special containers and a few cookie cutters. But, almost every year Christmas Day comes and I’ve made a grand total of ZERO cookies.

This year we’re going to make cookies together, on Christmas Day and deliver them to our neighbors. It will give us something to do as a family, it’ll be fun, (I hope) and will get us focused on doing something for our neighbors instead of being focused on what we got for Christmas. I’m really looking forward to it.

PLAY A NEW GAME
It’s so hard for me to find ways to spend time with my kids. We’ve got gaming systems, computers, Tivo, texting… I love technology but it doesn’t do much to bring us together.

One thing that I’ve found that gets us together and talking to each other is a good game. I’m not talking about video games here, I’m talking about board games, card games. You know, the kind that you play on a table, that don’t require electricity or a tv? This year I encourage you to give a new game or two to your family. Play it on Christmas day and then see if you can schedule a family game night every once in a while. We want to do this every month but are lucky if we manage it twice a year. Twice a year is better than never though. Here are some that my family enjoys and two that I’m getting this year.

Three Thirteen – my husband has been playing this with his grandparents since he was a little kid. Now my kids play it.

10,000 We play with the large craps dice from the casinos.
They’re bigger and fun to play with. And yes, I do know that dice is not plural, I just don’t care.

Apples to Apples – I would suggest the Jr. edition, even if you’re kids are older. My daughter is 14 and doesn’t always know the people or things on the cards. It’s the same game, just simpler subjects.

Pit – this game is fun, fast and loud

Would You Rather – This is new for us this year. It looks like a lot of fun though.

Mexican Train – this is a favorite.

The Great Dalmuti – This is another one I’m buying this year based on reviews. I can’t wait to be the Great Dalmuti so I can wear a crown and boss around the Greater Peon…

What fun things are you doing this Christmas?

(for more ideas check out Tip Junkie’s Mr. Linkey post about this.)

I’m not buying many gifts this year. It’s probably a little late in the season for you to be able to shift gears like this but I strongly encourage you to try this next year. I can not believe the difference it’s made. For the first time in a long time I have been looking forward to, and am enjoying the Christmas season.

I would love to tell you that I’ve made this choice out of some really smart and strong part of myself that knew it would be better for my family if we were less materialistic. I know that and I believe it, but I don’t know if I would have been able to make this choice if it weren’t for the state of the economy right now. It’s easier to tell people you’re not giving gifts when the news is all about people losing their jobs and homes.

I know that as I child we couldn’t wait to open the gifts and probably asked a hundred times when it would be time, but I don’t remember many of the gifts I received. I do remember making cookies with my grandma though, and trying to spy on the adults when we were supposed to be in bed. Those memories are more valuable than the Big Wheel I got. If there’s any upside to the things that are going on with the economy right now it’s that more of us will be collecting memories this year instead of presents.

In this post I have some alternatives to exchanging gifts that you can use with your friends or extended family. My next one will have ideas to make Christmas day fun for your kids with fewer gifts.

WHITE ELEPHANT GIFT EXCHANGE
My husband’s family does this. For those of you who haven’t heard of this before, you simply find something in your house that you don’t want any more and wrap it like you mean it. You can bring something funny or useful, it’s up to you. At the exchange the first person selects a wrapped “gift” out of the pile and opens it. The next person can choose to take an opened gift or select an unwrapped gift. If someone takes your gift you get to choose another. It goes on and on like this until all of the gifts have been opened.

That’s how we do it. If you Google “white elephant” you’ll probably find some other variations. It’s free and creates some great memories. You would be amazed at some of the things we’ve all fought over. And I don’t think anyone will forget the year Aunt Florence wrapped Uncle Gabe’s false teeth. He had passed away several years earlier and when they were opened she said, “That’s the last thing I had of his.” That family is sick. Those teeth come back every year.

We do a separate one for the younger kids. We used to have them bring something nice, but last year we let them bring funny gifts, too. They were so excited to see each others faces when someone opened a Barbie with one leg. Just make sure you set expectations so they aren’t expecting something they’re actually going to want.

GIVE
My extended family decided not to exchange gifts among the adults this year and instead chose to donate the money we would have spent to a worthy cause. This is the first year so we’re not terribly organized but I’m sure you can come up with some great causes. One idea is to pool the money, decide on a few favorite charities then let the children decide where the money should go. This gets them involved and excited about helping others.

BEST GIFT AWARD
I know what you’re thinking but no, this is not going to encourage everyone to see who can spend the most money and get the most outrageous gift. This award is for the best cheap gift. It’s probably best for this one if you draw names. I don’t know about you, but it sometimes takes a lot to come up with a really unique, inexpensive gift. I can’t imagine having to come up with something for everyone in our extended family. Because everyone’s idea of cheap is different, you might want to decide on a dollar amount and no gift can cost more than that. I’ve posted some ideas here and will continue to add ideas as I find them.
Make or buy a trophy or some other type of award for the winner, or maybe use a treasured family heirloom, and let the winner keep it for a year. Or skip the award and just all decide to give gifts that cost less than $5 or are free or… the idea is to stop trying to outspend each other.

MARSHMALLOW GUNS
One year my mother in law bought a bunch of little guns that shot ping pong balls. This is the family who re-gifts Uncle Gabe’s teeth every year, remember? Imagine the fun they had with ping pong ball guns. I haven’t been able to find those ping pong ball guns since then, but I think I’ve found something just as good, if not better – Marshmallow Guns. Softer, yummier and fun to make! (Cheaper, too!)

I’ve found several good tutorials.

This tutorial includes instructions for a quick loader. Everyone wants a quick loader, right? I do.
This tutorial has a picture of a PVC cutting tool I like. It’s easier and cleaner than a hack saw.
This tutorial has a nice breakdown of the price for the materials needed.

You may want to pre-cut the pieces and let everyone assemble their own. These can be painted and decorated, too. Have fun! (If you don’t think your family will have fun with these, take a look at the pictures of this family having fun.)