Forced Family Fun...and Fish

The Big Guy announced Forced Family Fun again at dinner tonight.  It was met with the usual cheers and squeals from the younger set and a tad bit of eye rolling from the older guys.  Jake tried to lobby for Forced Family Fish Tank Cleaning Fun, but he was out voted.

What is Forced Family Fun? All the exciting details are here...

Instead of playing a "thinking" game, my creative husband told us we'd be playing the always fun Sardines together tonight.

The basics of Sardines is this: turn out the lights, send one person off to hide, send everyone else out to find said person.  Everytime one of the players finds the "hider," the finder has to hide with them.  Obviously, the more times the person is found, the more crowded it gets.  Eventually, everyone gets packed into the hiding space like...sardines.  This is Forced Family Fun at its best, lots of close contact and suppressed giggles.

So, we gathered everyone in the school room, gave the newly turned 3 year old a flashlight and turned out all the other lights in the house. 

Nate was the first to go off and hide.  Somehow, he wedged his 6'3" body into the very back of our deep closet behind the clothes, port-a-crib, summer shoes and suitcases.  It took forever for anyone to find him.  Zach was first.  The Big Guy came second. I came third. 

At this point, the Big Guy and I had a little fun of our own.  I mean we were in a dark closet and standing next to each with ONLY two kids present.  That's pretty much like a date these days.  But I digress...

Ellie found us all and then came Jake.  This is when we realized the littlest Young'un was wondering around the dark house all by herself.  She is not an easily scared gal and we'd given her a flashlight, but still it seemed like an experience which could leave a few emotional scars.  Then we heard her downstairs calling, "Mom!  Dad! Did you guys leave me or something?"  Oops!

Jake ran down to get her and let her "find" us in the closet.  She thought it was great fun and laughed her curly little head off.



Some forced fun last summer

We spent another half hour or so finding each other and then the Big Guy called the game.  All in all, the night was packed (Sorry.  I couldn't help it.) with fun and some laughs.  Forced or not, it was good.