So, all the complaining people do about the budget and the deficit and the spending and the taxes in our country and they always have a solution to the problem.

Well, here’s your chance. Play Budget Hero (brought to you by your friends at Market Place Money) and see if you can balance the nation’s budget. I wasn’t so great at the actual balancing part (I basically took away a ton of $$ from the military and gave it to the schools) but the game itself is pretty educational and does a decent job explaining what cutting or adding money in different areas could mean for the short and long term effects on jobs, people, economy, etc.

Play a vocab game and donate 20 grains of rice for every correct answer. Go on try it. You know you want to….

I’ve always liked playing games. When I was younger board games were a highlight of almost every family gathering. I remember being at my grandparents’ house at Christmas time and playing pictionary or trivial pursuit. My grandparents never played but my parents, aunts and uncles, my cousin and I (we were the oldest cousins, all the younger ones either were rollerskating in the basement or sleeping) sat around the dining room table playing games. Grandma and Grandpa usually sat in their respective arm chairs reading and watching the news - or watching us.

Pictionary was always my favorite. It was fast, loud, and I kicked butt at it. Trivial pursuit was harder to play until I got to high school, then I knew more about history to be able to answer some questions. Although my family had so many expansion decks that you could almost always find a topic you knew a lot about. When we played you could pick from the original edition questions, the baby boomers edition, M.A.S.H. edition, baseball, rock and roll, television, Jr. edition, and about eight others that I can’t remember.

At my house, we have piles of games. There’s Life, Sorry, Clue, Scrabble, Super-Scrabble, Rummikub, Phase-10, Cranium, Trivial Pursuit, Jenga, Taboo, Yatzee, Monopoly (which nobody will play with me), Scattegories, Simpson’s Trivia, Pit, Soloman’s Temple (don’t ask), Carcassone, KIller Bunnies (and all of it’s available expansion packs), and Settlers of Catan.

Although, out of all of those, there are only a few that we play on a regular basis. Killer Bunnies is one of my favorites because it’s easy to learn and there is a rule in the rule book that basically says you can do whatever it takes to win just shy of out-right cheating. Any game that allows bribing, bartering and black-mailing is a fun game to play.

Settlers gets played a lot in our house - I like this one because the board changes every time you set it up - you can have a great game one night and nothing the next.

Tim and Nicole got a new game the other day called Ticket to Ride. You basically build trains from city to city across Europe. It’s quickly becoming one of my favorites.

So if you are looking for some new games to play, here’s what I recommend:

Two player - Carcassone, Phase-10, Rummikub, Ticket to Ride

Three - Four players - Settlers, Ticket to Ride, Sequence, Trivial Pursuit

Four or more players - Killer Bunnies, Scattegories, Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit, Taboo, Monopoly

It’s pointless. It’s addicting. It’s got Gonzo. I love it.

Check it out.

Check these out:

Pavlov’s Dog

Gene Codes

Split-Brain

Chicken Farm

Tuberculosis

Lasers

Authors

Peace

Read. Pray. Help.

I found this game online tonight. Ben has cancer and because of that was able to have a wish granted through the Make-a-Wish Foundation. His wish was to create a game where kids got to battle cancer cells. He felt it would help other kids like him be able to deal with battling real-life cancer better. I think it’s cool that he used his wish to help other kids like him.

I want a Nintendo, specifically a Game Cube. Tim brought his Game Cube over to our house a few weeks ago and we’ve been playing Mario Kart whenever we can. We’ve been trying to open up new cars and new race courses for sometime but we usually end up coming in second or third. Then Tim’s brother came over yesterday and got us two new cars and a new course in one afternoon. So now we have the bullet car and have been trying to break our record on the Baby Park track. Kevin scored a 1:17 but we haven’t even gotten close to Josh’s record. Tim’s getting married in a couple weeks which means he’ll be moving out and taking his Nintendo with him, which means there isn’t much time left to try and beat Josh’s record. I’ve been trying to convince Kevin of the benefits of having one - we can have the youth group over to play, it’s better than watching t.v., etc. but he’s not too enthusiastic of the idea, yet.