Carrie Bartkowiak v. 5.0

Yesterday was Kelsey’s birthday party - 8 screaming boys all ages 6-9 (plus a tagalong 2yo) going full-force for two hours. Wow… whodathunk that it would have tired us all out so much? The boys all fell straight asleep the instant they got home, without even complaining that it was time to go to bed. I fell asleep within ten minutes of my head hitting the pillow - amazing enough in itself - and then slept for 11 hours. Double wow!

So anyhow, today we just kinda vegged out. I did get a bunch of dishes done and some laundry and cleaned the science experiments out of the fridge, but other than that we just vegged.

One of Kel’s birthday presents he received yesterday was Monopoly - Here & Now. I’ve been looking forward to cracking this open, as I used to love the original edition. The older 4 of us played it (Alex kept trying to help, much to our dismay) and we had fun… but it really did last too long. Brendon quit after 2 1/2 hours, Kelsey and I were ready to quit at 4 hours and convinced Mike to pack it up. He wanted to keep everything set as it was so we could continue the play later. His words - “but I like it when somebody actually WINS!” - meaning him of course, LOL.

Next time, we’ll play the “short game” way: agree before starting on an end time, deal each player 2 properties right off the bat that they must pay for, and whoever is worth the most (cash and properties) at the ending time wins. Period.

I have 3 complaints:

The game needs more $1million value bills. The Bank was constantly having to buy back those bills from players, exchanging them for $5million bills. With 2 people this wouldn’t be a problem, but with the 4 of us playing it really was. They’re not making extra money packs for this edition yet, grrr. (The extra money pack for the original won’t work since the money values in the H&N set are so much higher.)

The board is now a quad-fold board. Ew. I hate those.

The black “trays” included with the game make no sense. Okay, so the money tray does make sense, but it doesn’t work very well. The money is sorted but easily slips into the adjacent tray. There isn’t a big enough separation between the denominations for the banker to quickly grab the bills s/he needs - you’ll end up just pulling from the center of that stack’s color or pulling the whole stack out and counting out the number of bills you need. Not to mention that it’s so tall that with the money placed into it, the box won’t close all the way (unless you like squishing your money). The second tray included, supposedly for the property cards, makes no sense AT ALL. There are 5 spaces; the one in the middle is larger than the other 4 and it’s the only one big enough to actually hold the property cards. So if the property cards go there, what goes in the other 4 spots? Surely it’s not the houses, hotels, Chance and Community Chest cards… because this tray is completely open on one side. That’s right… tip it a bit and everything comes sliding out. It’s really cheap, flimsy plastic too. Accidentally lean on these trays a bit and they’re permanently bent/crushed.

If you’re considering getting this for your family and have kids ages 10 and under, I’d really go for the original version. There’s no benefit to this version besides more “hip” or “cool” tokens, and those aren’t worth $30 on their own. Monopoly has always been such a great educational game because it taught kids realistically about money in a fantasy setting; with real dollar amounts that kids could really put their hands on ($1, $5, $10, etc). Here And Now takes the “realistic” angle out of it completely by using money amounts of 10k, 50k, 100k, 200k, 500k, 1million, 5million. The entire game becomes fantasy, nothing to care about; just a game… and the thought of having REAL money and doing this for REAL just flies out the window. Stick with the original.

Despite those problems though, we had fun. It was nice having a family game going that wasn’t a video game, and I’d like to find a way to make it a weekly ritual. Shorter games, though!
Ones I’d like to get that I remember from childhood are: TriOminos, Uno, Skip-Bo, Boggle. I’m also planning on getting Blokus for Brendon for his birthday in May (he really wanted it for Christmas but it didn’t fit into our budget), and I’m thinking about getting Set as well.

If you’ve got any suggestions for COOPERATIVE games that are fun for families, please, lemme hear ‘em! (Okay, even Xbox 360 games, sigh… lol.)

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
All comments get link love here... I got rid of nofollow!

 

When I’m surfing around the other Photo Hunters’ blogs, I like to look at the rest of the blog too (not just that entry) and see what else they’re chattering about. Today I found a neat story on Hootin’ Annie’s blog about a grocery store chain that is building stores that cater to the elderly. Supposedly this chain is global, which makes me wonder why we don’t see their stores (and the neat advances in shopping that they bring) here. I’d gladly shop at this store if I could; the changes they’ve made are great for seniors but they’d be extremely useful for weary moms of young boys, too! I know that my parents would also like shopping here; my mom is 5′1″ and could really use those diamond-plated steps, and my Dad would like that seat in the cart to help him rest now and then when his back is aching. They could even make the seat do double-duty and include a safety release that you can hit so you can put kids in the seat and still push it at the same time.

Check out the video on the left sidebar in this ABC news story and see what I mean. And then ask yourself - when are grocery stores here going to get with it and bring these advancements in? We’ve got carts with baby seats, carts with toddler seats, heck at Farm Fresh here we’ve even got teeny little carts FOR the toddlers to push around… but the only thing we’ve got for seniors, disabled, or even folks who happen to be in pain at the moment (like my Dad with his back pain) is motorized carts.

(I’m including the link to Farm Fresh because they have an online shopping area, and all of my international friends like to go in there and compare products and prices to what is in their own country. It’s a neat thing to do!)

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
All comments get link love here... I got rid of nofollow!

 

Who ever said homeschooling left you with a clean house?
Here’s my formerly decluttered and clean office inundated with small males cutting up magazines to make their own vision boards. Well, that’s what Kelsey’s doing (in the back). He’s got a Lamborghini on his and he’s in the process of cutting out his own island. (Ack!) Brendon, on the other hand, is just cutting out every pretty flower he can find. I think he’s just going to end up making a pretty collage, but that’s okay.

I am in the process of making a vision board, too. Been surfing for certain pictures and printing them out. It’s not done, but I’m finding out that I really don’t want all that much; not anything that can be symbolized in a picture anyway. I think I’m going to make some words and print those out to put on there, like “clean space”.

Join Show & Tell Saturday and show off what you’ve done during your homeschooling week!

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
All comments get link love here... I got rid of nofollow!