Bursting with Canadian Pride and 2-player board games

Although this Monday morning isn't off to the smoothest start (late/restless night/busy morning) we had a wonderful weekend and I am swelling with pride at our Olympic team!! So proud to be Canadian today, and so proud of our athletes and especially our hockey players (male and female!) :) Once we knew that Canada was going to be playing for gold yesterday morning, we arranged a little brunch at our house and watched the game. Molly got a bit bored (and we played with toys and read books throughout the game), but she was excited to see the medals and flag at the end!

(Via CTV)

I'm a bit sad that the Olympics are over, and I think Twitter is about to get a bit boring for a few weeks until something else interesting happens!!

We were able to see some of Brian's extended family and a lot of my extended family this weekend too, which was nice. It's not every weekend that Molly gets so much family time! The weather here was warm, especially on Saturday, so we actually barbecued for supper that night. We also watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty with Ben Stiller (it was pretty good, actually! Cute message and great music) and played some board games on Saturday night!

(Walter Mitty quote - Source)

Today, I wanted to share some of our favourite 2-player board games. Brian and I have a lot of "date nights" at home, even though we are fortunate enough to have about 1-2 date nights out of the house each month when Molly is with her grandparents. Often, we just watch a movie or TV series on Netflix, and we enjoy that, but it's nice to change it up every once in awhile and do something a bit more interactive. We are both pretty competitive (in a fun way! haha), so games are right up our alley. Occasionally, we will play Wii (either Wii Resort Sports, Wheel of Fortune, or Wii Jeopardy), but we also have a few fun board games that are good for 2 people. We both love strategy type games, and I personally like games that don't necessarily take all day/night (I'm not big into Risk or Monopoly etc. etc but Brian likes those). There are tons of card games for 2 players too (such as Cribbage!) - but I'm not going to get into those. Here are some of our favourite games:

• Rivals of Catan / Catan Card game -  We have the Rivals of Catan, but I think the Catan Card game is similar (just not as readily available). I bought this awhile ago because we both love the Settlers of Catan games but they require at least 3 players, so we don't get to play them very often. This is a variation of the Catan games that goes by pretty quickly, and it is easy to learn, especially if you've played the full version of Settlers. For those unfamiliar with Settlers of Catan, it involves rolling a dice in which the outcome will provide you with cards or resources to "build" settlements and expand to get victory points. The winner achieves a certain number of points.

•  Rummikub - this is a very straightforward game, and mostly has to do with luck and keen observation. The goal is to get rid of all the number tiles in your hand by laying down sequences or 3 of a kind etc.

• Carcassonne - I bought this when we first started dating because I had heard that it was also a bit similar to Settlers. It's a pretty fun game, but it's totally different if you play with more than 2 people. We played it on the weekend for the first time in ages, and we easily got through 3 games in 90ish minutes (Best 2 of 3, and I didn't win - boo! haha). It's a really easy game to learn, but there are a few key strategy points that people pick up on over time. It's another "building" type game like Settlers of Catan.

Every Carcassonne board ends up being different, which is pretty cool!

• Sequence - we haven't played this one in awhile, but it's also really easy and just uses two decks of cards - you could even make your own board for it (which I think is the one we have - Brian's mom made it for him). It gets pretty fast paced towards the end. 

• Scrabble/Yahtzee/Othello - most people have tried these games before, so I don't feel the need to elaborate too much. We went through a huge Scrabble phase a couple of years ago and played it all the time. Yahtzee is fun too, but we get sick of it because it's almost 100% luck. Othello is a pretty easy game, but the winner is often determined early on in the game and it can be hard to make a comeback. 

And some we'd like to try sometime:

Pandemic

Lost Cities

Ticket to Ride - Brian has played this with a friend, but I have yet to try it...maybe it will make an appearance at a birthday sometime this year ;)

Stratego

Any fun board game recommendations for us out there?

I also LOVE playing Scene it movie trivia on the XBox, but I can only really convince Brian to play that with me about twice a year (and the game is currently "missing" in our house - hmm, I wonder who hid it? haha). I should also mention that we have a lengthy list of fun board games that we like to play with friends and family - a whole post about that is coming someday soon!!