We're a Long Way From Candy Land

It seems like yesterday that we introduced Wayne to his first board game.

At age 3, Wayne loved this game with its little gingerbread man playing pieces, roaming a candy filled world.

What an innocent time that was.

We've moved on to bigger, more complicated and intellectually challenging games.
I played this Titanic game with Wayne and Cole the other day. It's quite complicated, but in many ways, similar to Monopoly. You have to acquire several items including a health inspection, passport, and life jacket before you can leave the second class section of the ship and make your way through first class and race to the life boats. When we played, Cole, not surprisingly, was the first to make it to his lifeboat. Wayne was second, and I, unfortunately, went down with the ship.
Cole shows off his loot. Cole also has this intriguing Titanic computer game. You can literally wander and explore the ship, from deck A to deck G, meeting people to talk with along the way. It's supposed to be a fairly accurate digital reconstruction of the ship. The game itself is a little over Cole's head, but it's amazing how he has learned (and remembers) to find his way all around the ship. Here he explores the turbine room in the lower-most deck. He's obsessed with this game.Wayne and Cole are on the "boat deck", I think.
Wayne has become a hotel mogul in the game of Monopoly. Wes doesn't stand a chance. I'll be in another room and Wayne will come running in, all excited, saying "Mommy! Daddy just had to pay me 1800 dollars!" That kind of thing happens repeatedly during their games. I don't know how Wes even manages to stay in the game long enough to finish. Other games that the boys have become experts at are Scrabble, (you can't win against Wayne. He's always go a strategy), Battleship, Bigfoot, Checkers. Cole is a master at the game of checkers. He's very good at thinking ahead to how his current move will affect later moves. Opponents don't stand a chance.

And here's Heather who is not quite ready for board games yet, but likes to get into the middle of it all and spread the pieces all over the room. She may not be ready to play games, but she is ready for a sunny day!Wes and Joanie took W and C to a collectors show this weekend, where they were fascinated by a model train exhibit. I stayed home with Heather who has been a very sick little girl with a terrible, painful sounding cough for the past few days. I sent the camera with them to the collectors' show, but they didn't take a SINGLE PICTURE!

Heather is feeling a little better today.