January Reflections '11- Fun

Fun: What have you done for fun this year? When is the last time you played? Do you need to add fun into your plans for 2011?

It thrills me to report that YES!, we have had fun this year!  And in fact, we had fun just last night!
 
We had friends over and played a new-to-us game with the oh-so-technical name of "Bowl."  I just looked for the rules online, but let me tell you, if you Google "game bowl rules" nothing close to what I'm talking about comes up.  (sigh.  so much American football...)

The game goes something like this: every person playing writes a list of 5 nouns on a little piece of paper and throws it into a bowl.  (hence the name...  so clever!)  Players choose a partner.  The game begins when the first player draws a list out of the bowl, and then, without using the word written on the paper, describes the items on the list for their partner to guess.  If the pair completes the list, they draw another list and do it again, until time expires (we used 45 seconds).  At the end of the time, the pair gets one point for each list they complete.  If they don't complete a list, it goes back into the bowl.  This continues until every player has given and received lists.  At the end of the round, all lists are returned to the bowl.

The game continues for three rounds.  During round one, players can use an unlimited amount of words to describe the word to their partner.  During round two, only three words can be used to describe each word on the list.  During round three, only gestures can be used, no words!  The original lists are used for all three rounds, so clever players can memorize lists, or use clues used before. 

This is a great game!!  We had 10 players, 5 sets of partners, kids and young adults and adults (uh... old adults?).  We hollered and laughed out loud!!  Of course, having super fun people to play with helps a lot, too!! Adding homemade chocolate chip cookies, chips, pico de gallo, and guacamole didn't hurt either! 

After it was all over, goodbyes said, dishes washed, chairs put away, my husband told me, "That was A LOT of fun!" 
Yes it was!  More fun games in 2011!

And more fun, and other thoughts too, at January Reflections '11 at TheGloriousImpossible.