Families everywhere are looking for ways to pass the time and connect during this pandemic, and in our house we’ve stumbled upon something that is working really well.

Like many families out there, we play games.

And like most families out there, we watch movies.

But we’ve linked these two activities in a competitive manner, and it has made all the difference in the world.  Here’s how it works:

• Night 1:  Have fun playing a family game. Winner picks movie for next evening.
• Night 2:  Movie night.  Relax and enjoy!
• Night 3:  Back to game night.  Loser from night 1 gets to pick the game.  Return to step 1 and repeat!

Occasionally we have enough time and energy to play a game and watch a movie in the same night, and other days we take a breather and do neither.  But a good 95% of the time this is our pandemic evening routine.

Some games are played in teams (like Pitch, our family favorite card game).  In that case we simply work as in teams to pick the movie and next game.  No biggie.

We started our competition with a dice game called Greedy, a classic taught to us by Clark’s mom.  (I swear the inventors of Farkle stole this from her family!) Maggie was the runaway winner, and forced us all to watch a terrifying Netflix thriller that thankfully didn’t give anyone nightmares.

Clark lost Greedy, so the next night we played his game of choice:  poker.  He won his own game and earned the honor of picking the next movie.  He tried to scare Maggie right back and queued up I Am Legend.  Not the most relaxing pandemic choice, but it definitely kept our attention!

Sam was the big loser in poker, and he picked Wii Bowling for his game.  Poor choice, because of course I was the winner there!

So you can see how the winners become losers and the losers become winners and somehow everyone walks away happy every.single.night.

We’ve played board games, card games, dice games, and video games.

We’ve watched classics, comedies, romcoms, and thrillers.  The kids are getting older so we’ve loosened up about what we watch together, but do still check the Common Sense Media movie reviews.

We’ve been doing this since late March, and are enjoying it so much I predict we will continue even after the pandemic ends.  (Because it will end… eventually.)

Last night I won Balderdash, so I’m off to pick out a movie!  Stay safe, everyone!