On Christmas night, my husband and I spent a pleasant evening playing Scrabble. Scrabble has always been big in my family - we have a collection of "scorecards" in the box at my parents' house, including dates and comments about various goings-on of the different occasions. I've continued that tradition with our Scrabble board, kind of a (very) loosely assembled family scrapbook.
This weekend we traveled out of town for Christmas with his side of the family. We arrived to find our relatives in the middle of various "Words with Friends" games, playing on various smartphone devices. Conversation was punctuated by trash-talking, exclamations of delight and groans of defeat. It wasn't long before we were drawn in. At one point after dinner, the living room was quiet and filled with faces of concentration as we each faced off against one another. Altogether there were probably close to thirty games going at once; I had five going myself. And mind you, both our nephew (hs junior) and our niece (hs freshman) were heavily involved, contradicting current wisdom/nonsense that states that 'kids these days' can't/won't do anything academic/family-oriented/literacy-based in their free time. Who says families don't play board games anymore?
.JPG)
