Boy Am I Sorry!

My son is crazy about board games. For a while there were only 2 in the house - "Candyland" and "Chutes and Ladders". He loved both of those games, we played them daily. All of the characters from "Chutes and Ladders" were falling apart, the cards from "Candyland" were worn out, and though Colin wanted to continue playing them daily, mom was clearly over them. I do have to say, though, that it was through "Chutes and Ladders" that Colin learned his numbers from 1-100, so there was definitely an upside.

While I was in the U.S. over the summer, I decided that the situation needed to be remedied, and at Aunt Julie's suggestion, decided to buy "Sorry!" to give to Colin as his birthday gift in December. But in the period between July and December, as we played countless "Chutes and Ladders" games, I was endlessly tempted to just break out the game early and end the insanity.

But I made it to his birthday, and he was very excited about his new game, because he had played the "Spiderman" version with his cousin Zane over the summer. In fact, I am happy to say that "Chutes and Ladders" and "Candyland" have been reassigned to the back of the cupboard. He also received another Italian board game for Christmas, "The Goose Game" (don't ask), but "Sorry!" is clearly his favorite. I can't even count the number of times we have played it since the middle of December. Sometimes we even play it more than once a day. On a red-letter day we even get a chance to play with Daddy, making it even more fun. It is a little complex for Lucia, she loses interest quickly, but she likes to hand out the cards to everyone else, and move the pieces. And Colin is really good at it - in the beginning I was taking it easy on him, but now he regularly kicks my butt. The children were supposed to start back on school on Wednesday, but both Wednesday and Thursday were snow days (we got about a foot and a half of snow, which in these parts, is unheard of) and what better way to spend a snow day than playing non-stop games of "Sorry"?

I have already decided that on the next trip to the US we are stocking up on SEVERAL board games. I have already scoped them out on Amazon.com. And I can't believe that I am actually thinking this, but I am sort of starting to miss "Chutes and Ladders".