All the Games on Our Shelves

  We've had an extended time with extended family, involving four generations staying at our house, so obviously a lot of gaming has taken place.  We started with Mind the Gap , which some of us northern California folks REALLY like and thought would be a particularly appropriate game with which to start the family visit -- a generation-based trivia game.  Not everyone was as much of a fan, but that's OK, as we certainly have plenty of other games from which to choose!  Below is a picture of family members who were gathered together; the group ranges in age from 0 to 85. Next game is one that is a time-honored tradition in our family: Rook .  EVERYONE likes Rook ! Qwirkle is a favorite of Al and Jo, our Michigan guests, and do they ever know how to maximize their play!! Then a card game called Dutch that our middle son learned in Thailand, ironically enough. The next one, Skull King , is a favorite of David's.  This game is very similar to the games Up an...

Now that Jacob and Caleb have moved out, David and I have to search our memory-banks to remember which games we own that are two-player games.  Rack-O is one I'm sure we haven't played in well over a decade.  It's a game for 2 to 4 players.  His family had this game while he was growing up, and when he and I were dating it was a game we would play when we spent time with his family.  I think we bought our copy early-on in our marriage, as the instruction booklet has our wedding year as the copyright date.  It had been so long since we played that though we remembered that the goal was to put the cards in the racks in order from lowest to highest we didn't remember how to start or if we played with fewer cards if there were only two players and how the scoring went and so on.  It was easy enough to figure out.  It's a very basic game, but it's one of those games where you can talk while you play, and sometimes that's what we want. Here was my first dea...

These days it is me, David, and Jacob in the area, but it is rare that I get a photo of all three of us, as one of us generally has to take the picture.  This weekend we had the chance to meet fellow gamer Adam, a  math professor at CSU Fullerton, who gamed with us and took a picture of our family.  He was a keynote speaker at the CMC^3 Math Conference in Monterey, which is where we were this weekend.  I made sure to connect with him, as I had read in his bio that he has created a freshman-level class on problem solving based entirely on board games.  How cool is that?!?!?!?  I connected with him after his keynote address, and we decided to be in contact after dinner to see if gaming would work out, and it did!  As had we, he too had brought a bag of board games along "just in case."  Below you see them all laid out on this table in the hotel lobby.  It was fun to see that so many of his games were ones we were familiar with (For Sale, Cod...