*Citadel, Seven Wonders the Quarter Game with a Heathly dose of Murder

 Photo: Miranda Johnson

 Photo: Miranda Johnson

 Photo: Miranda Johnson

Our Christmas continues with game playing. Citadels and 7 Wonders were laid out on the dining room table after dinner tonight. We also played Murder at the table before getting out the board games.

Murder is a game where whomever ends up with the token that is passed hand to hand under the table, is the person who winks at others and if they see that wink, they have to pretend they are dead. When that game was finished due to the high anxiety it caused David, we moved to the kitchen arbourite island to play the quarter game. That game needs no introduction to two previous generations in the house, but the third needed some coaching.

Richard hooked the boys in saying that when he introduces this game at adult parties, it is the hit of the evening. He told Duncan, David and Alex that he would give them coins with which to take some practice turns.

They practiced for as long as it took the rest of us to do up the dishes. Richard showed them his own tricks and how to use that spot on your hand that will let you bring the coin down with the minimum amount of noise – that sweet spot, he called it. Then we teamed up, settling down to in looking for blood – or if not that, at least throwing our hands down with the mighty force it takes to make enough noise to make it difficult for the other team to figure out whose hand does have the coin.

David’s difficulty was not in bringing his hands down. It was that his hands would pop right back up off of the table when they would hit it, so he had to really concentrate at keeping them down. All of us tried to figure out why we still call it the quarter game, when the coinage has morphed through fifty cent pieces, loonies and now we use the heaviest coin of all to get the maximum effect.

We played electronic games during the afternoon: we rented a Mario Brothers WII Game for the day; another group played the WII party game which someone owns.

David is in heaven. He is a 7 year old and playing with a 10 year old and a 13 year old who will tolerate him. How grown up is that! And being an only child, he has never had the experience of being “kicked off” a game, that was a life-time first for him, something that children in larger families are accustomed to dealing with every day, but for David, almost enough to generate a melt down.

We have been topped up with food: a choice of crepes, fresh waffles, butter horns the icing of which was plain or sprinkled with toasted coconut, and egg foo young, and that was all before lunchtime. Tonight’s desserts were chocolate mint ice cream, caramel toffee ice cream, bubble gum ice cream, vanilla ice cream or chocolate ice cream. “Who took away my green ice cream bowl,” Duncan called out. Well, it might have been me that had quietly put it back in the cupboard for I had been planning on using some smaller, cut glass sherbet bowls. I could see that just was not going to do for Duncan. I don’t think I would cut back to smaller bowls, either, if I knew the family tradition was ice-cream in the largest cereal bowls possible.