Pizza-game night

Judith sprinkled mozzarella cheese on four pizza, Logan bought three liter bottles of pop and Betsy contributed "smart pills" for our pizza-game night during Christmas vacation. Pizza-game nights originated with Grandpa and Aunt Carolyn inviting four of us at a time to Grandpa's house to eat pizza and play games.

With neither Grandpa nor Aunt Carolyn available, we planned our own pizza-game night. Judith baked pizzas and tossed salad. Then after dinner we cleared the table, set up card tables and whisked Kaelyn off to bed.

The first game was one Logan and Naomi remember playing at Grandpa's. It's a simple game. You set a ping-pong ball in the middle of the table and then everyone huffs and puffs and blows and tries to keep the ball from rolling off the table.

From there our games became more sophisticated. We played Phase Ten, Ninety-nine, Jenga, Uno Flash and Dutch Blitz. Betsy taught her friend Lauren, who joined us for the day, the strategy of Ninety-Nine while Brian and Joel tried to beat Libby at Dutch Blitz. They almost succeeded when Joel sneaked some of his cards to the bottom of Libby's pile. Meanwhile Dad and I stuck with Phase Ten for all ten phases while other players switched in and out of the game. Finally, when the "smart pills" and Skittles were gone, and after Brian completed the tenth phase and the Jenga tower crashed, pizza-game night came to an end.

"smart pills"