Happy New Year everyone!!!!!

And to all of the families included in this batch, a great big huge Congrats! to you!!!!!

Our family did the game night thing last night, with white grape juice for the kiddos and adult beverages for mom and dad, and fingerfoods fit for a party. We finally got to spend a good amount of time playing Blokus and we loved it. It says for ages five and up, but TT held her own at it and even managed to have less pieces at the end than GG a few times. She even came close to having less than RK once. TT picked up that “corners only” thing a lot easier than GG did, we kept having to tell GG that her move wasn’t allowed, but only had to tell TT a few times.

We also played Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders a few times, not my favorite games, but the girls enjoy them. GG is technically too old for them, but I guess she’s just played them for so long she doesn’t realize it. Or maybe it’s that she has fun helping GG. Either way, both girls enjoy these games, so I keep my own thoughts to myself and try to play nice.

Oh, and Bananagrams (TT played with her Tinkertoys while we played this one, though). We play a modified version of it, since the real rules have everyone playing as fast as possible, not taking turns. That doesn’t work so good when you’re playing with a child, so we take turns, but play the rest of the rules the same. I like Bananagrams better than Scrabble when playing with GG because there are no points to keep track of, no double or triple anythings to try to strategize with, and she can plan her next word without someone using that space (in Bananagrams each person plays their own space in front of them, it’s not a shared board). And yet, she gets the practice of looking at letters and making words. And since everyone’s letters are visible, when she’s stumped I give clues about what she can play, though she still has to figure it out herself. In Bananagrams it’s about who gets rid of their letters first (with creative rules so you have to pull more letters out of the available letters here and there), it’s not about who makes the best words or has the most points. If you play without taking turns then it’s actually a lot more fun, but… like I said, works better with kids if you take turns.

We even played some card games: One more one less, Go Fish, Old Maid, etc. If you are looking for some more card games to play with kids, this site has a list of them with the rules for each game.

TT became completely unreasonable about 8:30 and was herded off to bed (yes, there will be a post about her bedroom soon. Things went so well I was afraid of jinxing things by reporting them, but it’s been a week now, so I’ll report that things have gone miraculously well.) After TT went to bed we played a few more games with GG and then watched a movie before turning the TV to watch some of the New Year’s programming and then watch the ball drop. One humorous part of the evening: while the movie was on RK grabbed the deck of cards and laid out the pattern for Solitaire and GG practically freaked that you can play the “computer game” without the computer. RK then spent some time teaching her how to lay it out and letting her play it the old fashioned way. Too funny.

Now, a few comments about referrals. First, we have a whole lot of people on the Babies!!! post this month, and that warms my heart. It’s wonderful to see so many families being formed. Kids who need parents and parents who need kids… matched together. Makes me cry happy tears.

The last couple of batches have had some expedited referrals included, but I do not believe that this batch included any expedited families. If I’m wrong about that I’m sure someone will correct me.

I have confirmation from several agencies that the CCAA internal box still only shows 2/28/07 is through the review room. Several agencies know that their later clients are through review (March and in at least one case, April), but apparently all reviewers have not made it all of the way through March yet. If you don’t understand this, you might want to check out the links in the Important Posts section to the right, especially the post explaining how the review room works.

Once again, Happy New Year to everyone out there!!!!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 1st, 2009 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Reviews: Toys, Rumors - Review Room. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.