Games, games, games.

It's a rare occassion that my family doesn't go away for a holiday, but this thanksgiving, most of the rest of my extended family were off visiting others, so we had the long weekend to ourselves. The wife and I decided to treat the kids, then, with a weekend full of nothing but game playing.

Our family loves to play board and card games. We're generally a step beyond the basic Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers types of games, though some of those are on our shelves and played as well.

As of last night (Saturday, November 29), we've played well over one thousand hours of games. And we'll play a few more today!

Because we add our game-playing minute totals to the Million Minute Challenge, we've kept careful track of our playing times. Just for kicks, and for you to see how much we've really played, I've listed below the games we've played and the minutes played for each game. Please note that at times we had two games being played at the same time by different family members. Still...this is a lot of game-playing!

Tripoley - 53
Monopoly -101
Dragon's Gold - 60
Torres - 83
Digging - 52
Five Crowns - 73
Battleship - 33
Moose in the House - 12
Elfenland - 115
Phase 10 - 30
King of the Elves - 66
Lost Cities - 45
Rack-O - 25
Speed/Hong Kong - 19
Odin's Ravens - 68
Queen's Necklace - 65
Payday - 44
Doodle Dice - 41
Wizard - 129

That's 1114 hours of games in two-plus days! Today we have to finish our game of Wizard; we promised the two boys we'd teach them a new boardgame called Space Walk; we may play some dominoes; and who-knows-what-else?

It's hard for me to pick a favorite, but I really like Torres for a multi-player game, and I still think Lost Cities is one of the best two-player games around.