We have made it a focal point of the year to make sure to at least once a week get out and do something as a family that is not family movie night. Sometimes, this can entail a trip or just a day in the yard having fun. This week, we have been busy with stuff going on and me and my wife have been putting in extra hours towards the side hustle to pay for the trip next week to Huntsville. So, with the storm heading in last night, we decided to all hunker down and spend some time fighting over a board game as a family.

The first thing I have to explain is that my family is all overly competitive. My wife will beat you with the game box you get in her way. Zoey is a competitor through and through. If you see her in a swim lane with another competitor, you’re in for a good day of swimming. Put her in a lane with a kid that is there because mom and dad made them. Zoey joins that pace because her motivation is completion. Ellie is probably worse about it than Zoey she thinks she has to be best at everything the issue is unlike Zoey she won’t work for it she just expects herself to be good period or else she throws fits and refuses to speak to you. Timmy is not bad yet about competition, but I think he will be he is still overly athletic compared to kids his age and can beat kids 3 to 5 years older than him. Trying to get him to take practice or anything serious is hard because he just knows he’s good at it.Believe it or not I may be the most competitive of the group I don’t throw fits or lose my cool but I spend days planning how I will win next time.

So we have been picking up new games lately trying to get things we could play for hours and enjoy as a family. One of the new games is a game called Ticket to Ride. It is a game where we must build trains and connect train lines. Well, being our first go round, we figured it would get dicey, and it did. We messed up color codes to begin with, and then we spent half the game trying to pull a grey train card, but grey is an any card works line. Needless to say, the game ended right after a battle ensued for a spot at the top that 3 of us needed to finish a line. I’m still convinced that threats were made, and the game was tainted by fear of who was going to fall asleep first and who was going to stay awake to retaliate. Either way, after a couple of hours, it ended with my wife winning by a couple to Timmy, who somehow scored a ton of points by accident because he is good at everything.

The moral here is that even though it was a stressful event with yelling at threats to hurt people’s toys and, in my case, my Xbox. We had a blast and learned to think ahead. Sometimes, as a family, it is nice to turn off the television and just do something together that takes everyone to accomplish. Whether it’s a board game or a puzzle. Have fun as a family don’t just mail these days with the kids in, or you will be old looking at your grown-up kids wondering where the time went.