The family that PLAYS together STAYS together

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melensdad

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Just curious but how do you play?

Obviously if you are a member here, you probably also PRAY together, but how else to you stay together?

My family lives in a rural area outside of Chicago (about an hour southeast) and we love to garden, love to shoot, play with our dogs, ride scooter together on sunny days. In the winter we play with our snowcat (nicknamed Herbie).

My daughter loves pink, so most of her guns are pink.
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We abuse our dogs in amusing ways:
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We love the snow and winter sports and have odd “yard art” parked in the front of the house during the winter months . . . and my daughter is never late for school, not even on SNOW DAYS :rolleyes:
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Your daughter’s guns are pink, and you abuse your dogs in amusing ways…:eek: 😃 If I didn’t read other posts of yours melensdad, I’d think you’re a loon! 😛

For fun, we like to play tennis…go for nature walks…we go bowling sometimes…minigolf, go to the beach…

My dh is working a lot, but when he is home, we all love to hang out together. :love:
 
whatevergirl said:
Your daughter’s guns are pink, and you abuse your dogs in amusing ways…:eek: 😃 If I didn’t read other posts of yours melensdad, I’d think you’re a loon! 😛
. . . go to the beach…
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Uh, we go to the beach too. The lovely Mrs Melens’mom is planning a trip for this summer to St Augustine Beach Florida. We honeymooned there. Been back almost a dozen times??? in the past 24 years. Never with the dogs :eek:

But I like colorful guns too. Guess which one we named after Barney the Dinosaur?
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y75/melensdad/guns/P1060866.jpg

Oh, and sometimes we make the little dog run around NEKKID :eek:
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*I take it back…you ARE a loon. :D:p Kidding, of course.

Being a little crazy is a good thing…well, it can be a good thing.

You know, I have never been to St Augustine…I hear it’s quite charming and tranquil there. Need to go one of these days.

Nice chatting. 🙂

You don’t shoot deer or birds do you? :(*
 
Camping! (in a cush rv…this mama only camps princess-style :D) We absolutely love taking the camper on adventures.

The beach is another fav family activity. And hanging out on the pool deck in the back yard.
 
whatevergirl said:
*I take it back…you ARE a loon. :D:p Kidding, of course.

Being a little crazy is a good thing…well, it can be a good thing.

You know, I have never been to St Augustine…I hear it’s quite charming and tranquil there. Need to go one of these days.

Nice chatting. 🙂

You don’t shoot deer or birds do you? :(*
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St. Augustine is a beautiful place!! You should go!

Don’t be sad…deer are yummy:D
 
When the kids were younger, we liked Uno, Euchre and watching old movies.

Now we like to play Scene It. Meals together are also important.
 
Ice skating. It all started when the oldest daughter was 5 and the younger daughter was 3, and Daddy was in his 30s.

Twenty-one years later, they’re all still skating. The rink is truly our second home. We love all aspects of the sport.

I never have skated (bad feet), but I’m the biggest fan, and I’ve tried very hard to capture a lot of those great moments in my family’s life in my novels.
 
I am looking forward to looking at your youtube video, Cat…can’t open it here…🙂
 
happymommy said:
St. Augustine is a beautiful place!! You should go!
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YES!!! St Augustine has a Catholic heritage, although in more modern times it was dominated by protestant religions. Still, it was founded by the Spanish explorers and the origins of the city, in fact the region, are Catholic and date to the earliest settlements in north America. The architecture of the city is beautiful. It is somewhat touristy, but there are plenty of family friendly activities, miles of beautiful beaches and lots of water activities.
KCT said:
Meals together are also important.
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Ah yes, meals together. Even with my daughter’s violin lessons and fencing club *(3 times a week) *we still sit down together for almost every evening meal together. Weekend meals are also almost always family meals.

I think its important to have family time during meals, and its fun *(most of the time) *too.
 
When my six brothers and I were growing up play mostly consisted of spending the whole day running wild through the woods, and letting our imaginations run free. The brother just above me was my particular friend, and we had these little toy animals that we played with all the time… they had these spaceships and would have all manner of adventures, which we would write up into books that mama would read to the babies.

We used to have the most superb battles on the rock ridge, which were especially splendid when the fogs rolled in. We’d re-enact scenes from Shakespeare’s Henry V, in imitation of our father who would often entertain us in the evenings with his recitations.

Again in imitation of him we had a keen interest in making movies and as little people we would write the most hideous stories you can imagine, though we thought they were pretty good at the time, and with hideous acting would play them out before the camera.

We did live performances for the entertainment of our parents, too. We loved the old serial films and put on a version of The Shadow. We had all these old boxes stacked by the front door, and we would set them up in nice towers so when the Shadow came upon the villain’s thuggish henchmen plotting in some old warehouse and the fist-fight ensued we would have ‘furniture’ to fall against, and ‘chairs’ to break over each other’s heads. 😃

We loved The Shadow radio show, too, and we wrote our own radio shows and recorded them on poor quality cassette players. My hero was called Metal Man, and I actually found some of the old tapes the other day. We had such a great time listening to them… they sent us into such fits of laughter.

We wrote lots and lots and lots of stories. We wrote so many that I’ve lost count. Sometimes we’d stay up far past our bedtimes finishing one up, and we’d get together every so often and read them aloud to each other. The ones I mentioned about our space-travelling animals were our favourites, but the adventures of Paladin and Saladin are also legendary in our household.

At a certain point we created this alternate world, very futuristic with lots of spaceship and technology, which was plunged into a dark war. We each had our own newspaper (I remember the Daily Beep and Ultra News) and every evening we’d spend half-an-hour writing up quick stories so we could have the morning paper out on time. We had a sign-up sheet in the hall, and we all subscribed to each other’s papers… mama added her name, too. Sometimes we’d wander around the house and interview one another, asking ‘the citizen off the street’ what his opinion was of the latest Swarm attack, or the mysterious murder of Dr. Koagen’s new assistant.

And that’s pretty much how things still are, though the older set aren’t home as much… lots of outdoors, lots of imagination. Sadly the little kiddies seem to have more of a relationship with video games and whatnot, though. I sometimes wonder if they’re going to have the beautiful and unique memories that I do. 😦
 
What lovly ideas! My faves are letterboxing (atlasquest.com for more info) games our currant faveorite is youve been sentanced where you get random cards with words and have to create the best sentance you can. we howl with laughter when we play. I love reading aloud to my kids even the 10 and 8 yearold…right now it is d,aulaires book of Greek Myths. This is just what comes to mind for now…
 
Yeah! Other families that play!
Play is not only very important for my kids and I, but it is also my career. I teach parents to play with their kids and give them the tools to do so. I am amazed at how few parents know how to play! I alos work with autustic kids and help them socialize through play.
So how do we play?? Lately our favorite has been a variety of indoor games, board games, creative games, like Flip Tac Toe, WIz Kids, and Stormy Seas Or Once Apon a Time. We create with beads, fabric, paint, wire, Many kids, many media! We also love to “sword” fight my kids started out as fans of CS Lewis then Tolkien, which led to “swords” in the back yard. I did not like all the big sticks! So when I found out about Belegarth with foam swords we checked it out and were hooked! Can you imagine 6 girls attacking a field of boys? My son is the only one who holds back.
We also love hiking, camping, biking, Photography expeditions, gardening and frog hunting. I have a houseful of kids, so our play opportunities are endless, they just dont include technology!
God created us to learn through play. Discovering our world should be fun! Our minds only get old when we stop playing…I will never be old!
 
We’re a game family too! Our favorite right now is “Wahoonu” (spelled terribly wrong I’m sure; it’s a Cranium brand game). We often have family game night when our (almost) 20 year DD is home from college. DS17 pretends that he’s forced to play but really enjoys it also.

Our latest family hobby is geocaching. There’s an older thread about it somewhere. I reallly wish we had found this earlier when our kids were younger. You get out hiking in areas you didn’t know were there; combined with a treasure hunting aspect and GPS technology, it’s great for all ages. Go to geocaching.com for more info.

Any more adult leaning board game ideas for family game nights?

Kris
 
Kwitz you should look into letterboxing- it is the same idea as geocaching only without a gps just a compass and some clues…very fun.
Fave board games for the older crowd…Mad Gab. apples to apples, youve been sentanced, Boggle (I am the champion) Would you rather…
Keep the ideas coming!!!
 
melensdad said:
Cute doggy??? Just curious, when was the last time you had your eyes checked? 😛
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Hehehe… “melensdad”. I’ve always thought the so-called “homely” doggies are the CUTEST. Our first dog, Abby had a tremendous underbite… jutting bottom teeth, ears like a BAT and NO tail. And our next two dogs… were squishy-faced, snortling Boston Terriers. One of them, had “bug eyes” :rotfl:

YES… your doggy is SOOO CUTE! Give him a pat on the head from me!

God bless and Happy Easter.
 
Something I forgot to mention is that we love science fiction movies, TV shows and will often gather as a family if one of our favorites is coming on TV or if we rent the DVD. The FIREFLY show, and the spinoff movie SERENITY are favorites of ours. Of course some of the Star Trek series, particularly VOYAGER and NEXT GENERATION. While I will always have “Beam me up Scotty” engrained in my brain, the original series seems pretty campy when I see it on reruns!
Truly_Beloved said:
Ooooooooooh, they come in purple? ❤️

I have to show my husband; he’ll probably think I’m nuts for wanting a purple one. (We’re going to take a marksmanship class this year… Can’t wait to learn!!)
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That Purple “Barney” gun is built off of a Cavalry Arms polymer lower receiver. They make them is lots of pretty colors and then normal gun colors like black, tan & green. But they have electric green, pink, yellow, blue, red, and yes,** PURPLE**. They are very popular with competitive shooters because they are lightweight but I’ve also found them very popular with both the youth and female crowds for the very same reason. Plus they are pretty 😛 I build my own, but they can be ordered through your local gun dealer. Here is a link >> cavalryarms.com/SFF.html
MarieVeronica said:
Hehehe… “melensdad”. I’ve always thought the so-called “homely” doggies are the CUTEST.
…
YES… your doggy is SOOO CUTE! Give him a pat on the head from me!
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Well he is something!?!
 
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