The Fugal Family Flip-Off

This morning as I was reading Charlotte's blog (which lead to reading Jacob's blog) it brought back loads of fun memories that I have of playing silly, made up games with my family. I will share this one... (I started to leave a briefer version of this as a comment on Charlotte's post, but then decided it would work better as a post of its own, so Charlotte, feel free to consider this a very long comment on your "eggstravaganza" post:)

One night I was sitting around the table just yakking with my brothers Mark, Eric, and Mike, and Mike's girlfriend, (now wife) Rachael. For whatever reason, there were a couple pennies on the table, which we started casually spinning while talking. This soon turned into a very intense competition. We collected a bunch of pennies, then we would each carefully choose our penny, making sure that we all had a penny of a different year so that we could tell them apart. Imagine us, sitting around the table, intently poised with an outstretched index finger holding the penny upright and the other index finger ready to flip the edge of the penny to send it spinning. The judge for the round yells go, and everyone flips their penny. The pennies spin wildly around the table, and the last to fall is the obviously the winner. This may sound stupid (and really, it was) but we laughed and laughed, and played that silly game for HOURS! it was well after 2 am when we finally decided that it was time to be done. Before Mike left to go back to his apartment, we officially named the game and then terminated the "First Annual Fugal Family Flip Off."


It is funny to me how often that memory is brought back up when we siblings get together. It is a great reminder to me that many of the best memories I have of growing up didn't cost any money, didn't involve a lot of planning and preparation, they just seemed to happen spontaneously and unexpectedly. I am afraid that all too often I try to "BUY" memories for my kids. I know that it doesn't work that way, I just have to keep reminding myself of it, and then try to give the kids a bit more free time and free space so that they can create memories and relationships that will last forever.