Fireside family time

Last Sunday, I told the kids “We’re going to build our first fire tonight.” They jumped up and down and eagerly anticipated it all day, as did I.

We don’t have a television in our living room, in the room with the fireplace. It is more of a sitting, reading, and lay-on-the-couch-with-the-kittens-on-your-chest kind of room. As I navigated my Sunday — grocery shopping, a walk in the park — I was as giddy about our first fire as the kids were. I envisioned us playing board games to the sound of wood popping. I’m tired of all the games we have, so I made a detour to Target and picked up a couple of basics: Blokus and Boggle. A spatial game and a word game to suit the strengths of the different factions of our family.

Sunday night we chilled a bottle of white wine and ate a dinner of bruschetta  and crostini, cheeses, and fruits. The fire snapped in the living room while we ate, and kittens perched on the hearth watching the flames, curious.

We have now lit a fire and played games together two nights in a row. The kids don’t ask about TV. Who wants to sit in the basement and stare at a screen when we could be upstairs with the fire, engaging in fierce friendly competition?

Even more exciting than fires two nights in a row: the family loves Boggle, a puzzle where you build words out of randomly arranged letters. On Sunday I had a great game and beat everyone handily. Monday, though, the competition was stiffer. I was the one to bring down and my husband almost got me.

Next time? Who knows. But it’s awfully nice to have a warm hearth to turn to each night, to drink wine or whiskey or hot chocolate by, to sit in front of and feel its warmth while laughing over board games with the family.

For the month of November, I will be participating in NaBloPoMo and plan to publish every day of the month. Usually, I will publish a 10-minute free write, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Follow along with the tag #NovemberDaily.