Great Christmas gifts for Grandma and Grandpa!

Definitely some of the most difficult people to buy for during the holiday season are Grandma and Grandpa. How many sweaters and kitchen gadgets can one have after all? A toy store might not be the first thing that comes to mind when shopping for the grandparents, but we might have some of the best choices! Here are our top 5 gifts for grandparents for the 2011 holiday and Christmas season:

1. Tilt (single player game) (the Staff's favorite for 2011!)
The goal is to slide the green sliders into the center hole without sliding in the blue sliders. Pick one of the 40 challenge cards and place the blockers and sliders according to the card. Then you tilt away until you've puzzled out how to slide the green sliders into the center hole without the blue sliders going in. A super fun game that is one of this staffs favorites!



2. Pathwords (single player game)
This is a single player game that starts out simple and becomes progressively more difficult. Players get a set of colored transparent shapes that they use to try on show the paths of the different words in the puzzle. All of the letters must be covered and be part of a word. This game is a fun twist on traditional word games.

3. Square Up (One OR Two player game)
Square Up will have your fingers and your brain racing simultaneously! To begin, shake the cube to find your pattern. Replicate the pattern in the inner 9 squares by sliding the tiles and slap down the frame first to win the game!

4. Forbidden Island (cooperative game for for 2 to 4 players ages 10 and up)
We picked this one for grandma or grandpa to play with the grandkids during the holidays!
Join a team of fearless adventurers on a do-or-die mission to capture four sacred treasures from the ruins of this perilous paradise. Your team will have to work together and make some pulse-pounding maneuvers, as the island will sink beneath every step! Race to collect the treasures and make a triumphant escape before you are swallowed into the watery abyss!

5. Spot it! (a great game for grandparents and grandkids to play together)
This quick and easy to learn game is great for young and old to play together! Little kids do surprisingly well and older kids and adults are challenged (and sometimes humbled!). Each and every card ALWAYS has a match (just one) to every other card. Spot the match first and you get the card. The player with the most cards wins. The different sizes make spotting a match much harder than it might sound. This is our staffs all time favorite game for the last 2 years running. The box recommends 7 and up for ages, but after playing with dozens and dozens of kids we recommend ages 4 and up! A great game for grandparents to play with grandkids!

Great Two-Player Games (a.k.a. Games I Can Win Against My Husband)

My husband and I are competitive. No, make that VERY competitive. We play to win, and we talk "smack" (as the kids call it these days) all along the way.

But I usually lose, and I'm tired of it. We play tennis, he kills me. Golf, no contest. I get excited if I actually get to play a full hole out before I have to pick up my ball in humiliation because the next group is waiting to play through.

I don't fair much better at card and board games. I refuse to play chess with him any more. Really, it's just too painful. I even went so far as to check out a couple of strategy books from the library. Have you ever looked at one of those? My eyes glazed over in boredom before I learned even one combination. When I caught my husband perusing it, I promptly dumped it in the drop box at the library and declared I would never play him in chess again. Yep, I'm that mature.

So I've been on a quest to find games that I can actually have a chance of winning. See, I understand why my kids cry when they lose. I feel the exact same way after awhile. Well, maybe not quite that bad, but I do get frustrated. So I've been checking out different games for those evening hours after the kids are all tucked into bed and there's nothing on tv. Here are some games we found so far that lend themselves nicely to just two players (and that I can actually win once in awhile!):


1. Visual Eyes: I love this game! I think it is one of the most creative games on the market. You roll big picture dice. Then using the pictures, you try to create well known phrases and compound words. The pictures can mean different things to different people, making this game all the more interesting! For instance, a picture of a watch could mean time, watch, or clock. So a picture of a watch and a tall building could be used to form the idea "watch tower." It's hard to describe how cool this game is.

2. Goblet: This game is a twist on getting four in a row. Not only do you have to think about where to place your pieces to be the first to get four in a row, but you have to decide which size of piece to play. Some pieces can get "gobbled Up" when your opponent places a larger piece over yours! So you might be tempted to play your large pieces early on, but then you won't be able to gobble up your opponent later to block him or her.

3. Cosmic Cows: This game is the most unique dice game I've played by far! You line up cows in the middle of the board. Then you take turns rolling to see who can move the cows down their paths to the home zone first. It's harder than it sounds since you both keep moving the same cows back and forth on the board. And there is strategy to it, too. You have to decide when to advance a cow into your home zone or when to try to move one away from your opponent's home zone. Great fun, and the little cows are so darned fun to look at!

So I don't win every time, but these games at least give me a fighting chance. Try one and let me know what you think!