Old Style Entertainment!

Incredible to see that the storm that has been stalking this side of the world for almost two weeks now is still out there but as I have said, Mother Nature will always gets her way as we cannot understand how powerful and unpredictable she can be. While I am relieved that the Storm did not have any negative impacts to my family or our interests, my heart goes out to all those who have suffered the wrath of the Storm around the world. The best we can all do is learn and prepare for the next one.

Last weekend was different as our typical days of going out for food or shopping were impacted by the expectation and tracking of the Storm. While we did not lose any power at all, there were times when the rain and lightning made us huddle together as a family while really avoiding to be near electronics that could be impacted from the Storm. As the family got somewhat bored after a couple of hours, we decided to do some old fashioned entertainment!

My daughter looked at us in weird ways when we brought out some board games like Scrabble and Parcheesi! Although she had seen us play in the past, it was never of interest to her given her digital surroundings. However, given how here vocabulary has continued to expand, she actually got quite competitive when playing some Scrabble! She also got to working on her Math as her mom is known to cheat a bit when adding up the points!

The last time we were with the family in Puerto Rico, a couple of us decided to play card games as well as we found out we were missing a domino which would have been the preferred game at the moment. We decided to play Spades which required some refreshing of the rules which always differ among the members of the family. I had learned to play in camp when I was a teenager while my brother in law learned in the Military so rules can definitely differ. Competition (impacted by some alcohol) got intense as scores were always close so it made for some funny moments. My daughter remembered the game and asked us to show her some card games as well.

We had to begin by telling her that Spades was a bit difficult to teach at her age in addition to the fact that we were only three players. However, my wife and I started to recall (and Google) some other card games to play. I had forgotten the age old game of War which was a fun one to show her. We also tried some "Go Fish" but quickly realized how we had forgotten how to play that one as well! We thought about playing some Crazy Eights but remembered we had UNO cards as well!

The fact was that we spent a couple of hour experiencing each other playing without technology (except for Googling some rules). It was pretty interesting and it quickly reminded me how different things were in the past where we could be so resourceful with so little. While my daughter was mostly interested in learning how to shuffle with her little hands, I think she enjoyed doing something different that required some competition with the old folks!