No such thing as a Participation Award

One of the things I love about playing games with my kids is the opportunity to impart some life lessons. There are rules to follow, turns to take and wait for, and of course the opportunity to win...or lose. My children participate in various sports throughout the year. During the summer they join city swim team. Each week, the various teams in the city meet for a swim meet that pits kids against one another based on age. Usually there are about 8-10 swimmers per heat, and they all race to touch the wall first. In years past, each child would get a ribbon based on the place they got in the race. First got blue, second got red... all the way to last place which was usually a shade of brown. Some of my kids really wanted that blue ribbon, while others preferred different colors and didn't care what place it represented. Of course, sometimes disappointment would occur when one of my kiddos didn't swim very well (or just plain got beat), and tears would flow. While losing could be difficult, it opened the doorway for them to learn from their mistakes and work to improve. Fast forward to today, and suddenly the ribbons have changed to just simply state "Participation Award". The theory is that children should be rewarded for just showing up, and shouldn't feel like they have anything to prove or are being compared to anyone else. Um, hello, what on earth is happening! What are we teaching our kiddos... have you ever shown up to a job and said "Hi, I'm just here for the participation paycheck just for being here. I'm not going to try and improve and do my best, because every body gets a prize.. right?" Board games are excellent for kids because from a young age they can learn how to try hard, do their best, be gracious in winning, and learn something from losing... all in the safe environment of home! So many creative games have come out that teach kids how to think outside the box, develop problem solving skills, and most involve some sort of math (even if it is just keeping score). Its a wonderful thing to see a group of kids playing together...and not one of them receives a participation award!

The Game That Started An Obsession

When my husband and I moved to the Midwest, we had never lived more than 10 minutes away from the nearest family member. Now we were 1200 miles away, learning what ice and snow weather was like, and feeling like we were completely alone. This is when games started playing a huge role in our lives. We had always played card games and dominoes, but one Christmas we went home to visit family and were introduced to Settlers of Catan. I was immediately IN LOVE with the strategy and game-play style of this game. I knew I had to get my hands on a copy of it to bring back home to Kansas, but I was SHOCKED at the sticker price. At that time, I'm pretty sure we paid $60 for the original game, and I had NEVER paid more than $10 for any game in my life. Little did I know that there was so much more to board games than Monopoly. When we got back to Kansas we started introducing neighbors and grad school friends to Settlers. I'll admit the initial explanation of the game usually brings about a glazed look in the eyes of new game players (thankfully over the years we've pretty much mastered explaining it in under 5 minutes), but once we got about half way through playing the game, our new friends started to really get into it just like we had. Before long, we had made quite a few friends who shared a love of games, and weekly (if not daily) game nights had become a regular thing at our house. It's been over 12 years since my first experience with Settlers, but it is still a game regularly played with friends and family alike. It opened the door to a whole world of board games (and I'll admit I've paid way more than $60 for some of our games), and it also has allowed us to meet some of the coolest people from Kansas to Arizona.

Welcome Friends!

Hi, and welcome to my blog! I thought I'd introduce myself and let you know what to expect from the azgamemom blog. My name is Calli, and I am obviously from Arizona, and a Mom, and I love games!! (and exclamation points lol) I have 4 awesome kids from ages 5-15 and one handsome hubby. I am a native to Arizona, but I did spend 5 years in the Midwest (shout out to Independence, MO and Overland Park, KS). During our time in the Midwest, we were away from family and needing to make friends...enter games! We started ordering board games, card games, and video games so that we could make friends with the neighbors and fellow grad students. We also started hosting different t.v. and movie watching parties for our friends that were not so thrilled with our game obsession. Now, almost 10 years later (CRAZY!), we are back in sunny Arizona and still crazy about games, movies, and television. I started an Instagram account to share the games we play, and thought I'd add a blog so that I could do a more detailed review about board games we love (and some we didn't like as much) from the perspective of a girl gamer and her family. Hope you enjoy!!