A Very Late Friday Five: GAMES!

Jan over at Revgalblogpals writes:

In less than three weeks, my family, including children and their partners, will be gathering in Seattle, WA for 12 days. After various days in Seattle sightseeing and in Bellingham seeing family, we will travel to the coast of Washington State to spend three nights in a large rented house. With nine adults (from almost 20 years old and up), I am thinking that we need to have some activities pre-planned--like GAMES! (Any ideas will be appreciated.)

So this Friday Five is about games, so play on ahead. . . .

1. Childhood games?

Among our childhood neighborhood games were Kick-it-and-run, (enough kids if the Catholic family down the street played), "Twelve o'clock midnight/Hope to see the Ghost tonight" (great for summer evenings, Red Light/Green Light, and Simon Says. My sister and I also made up a game called "Flood", which consisted of pretending that our house was in a flood and taking all of the books off the bookshelf and putting them on the floor as stepping stones to various rooms in the house. My mother LOVED that game. not.

2. Favorite and/or most hated board games?

We played a lot of Monopoly (though very rarely finished a game), Yahtzee, and Rook, and Parchesi. As a college student I also learned to love Pit. I loved Trivial Pursuit, when that was popular, but hated the one where you have to draw. My grandmother and I liked to play Scrabble together (but she cheated). Any game which can be construed as embarrassing in any way -- I hate. But I like the ones where everyone laughs until their sides hurt.

3. Card games?

The aforementioned Rook was very popular, as my grandparents did not think it appropriate to use regular face cards. I learned to play Gin Rummy in college, and the predecessor to the card game Uno.

4. Travel/car games?

We played Twenty questions a lot, as well as one which started with my dad intoning.... "I spy with my little eye something that begins with.... (letter of the alphabet)". We also sang songs in the car, particularly songs from musicals, and rounds like "Frere Jacques" and "Row, Row, Row your Boat."

5. Adult pastimes that are not video games?

My husband and I enjoy doing Crossword Puzzles, Acrostics and Cryptic Crosswords together (well, actually he enjoys Cryptics much more than I do).

Bonus question about family vacations:

I'm bad at this; I mostly want to eat a lot.