Great family board games for a long weekend

We’re excited for Thanksgiving this week.

We love that Thanksgiving comes near the end of the year and before we move into the Christmas holiday and New Year resolutions. Why? Because Thanksgiving* gives us a chance to pause and think about all our blessings. And with it being near the end of the year, we naturally reflect back on our blessing for the year. It also helps us put things in perspective and in a giving mindset to those we love and those less fortunate than ourselves.

And when we’re thinking about our blessings, our thoughts naturally turn to our families. Our greatest feelings of gratitude are for our family and friends. It’s these cherished relationships that bring joy to our lives. Thanksgiving is one of the best times of the year to gather with family.

We’re also extremely grateful this Thanksgiving that I, dad, have a full-time job again. For those that have followed us this year, you may have seen our posts about being unemployed. Unfortunately that lasted most of 2011. But the great news and blessing is that I was hired by a local company in October. We send a grand “thank you” to all of those who kept us in their thoughts and prayers. Likewise, our thoughts and prayers go out to those who find themselves in that tough situation. We understand your struggles and hope that even in these tough times you can reflect on blessings you do have in your life and that you are able spend treasured time with your family this weekend.

So what are we going to do with this extended weekend of time with our family? Although we can’t foresee the future, we have a pretty good idea what we’ll be up to.

• Eating good food
• Catching up with extended family
• Watching movies
• Sleeping in
• Playing some video games
• Cold weather neighborhood football
• Celebrating a 16 yr. old birthday
• And Playing Family Board Games and Card Games!

I’m sure we won’t get to all the family board games we want to play, but we do have a bunch on our mind – of all different types. Long weekends are great times to pull out games that may take a couple hours to play. And when you have a lot of family gathered it’s also a great time for party games where everyone can participate. Games that let you talk and visit during the game are also great for these types of gatherings.

Here are some of the games that we’re really looking forward to playing this extended family weekend.

Long Games:

• RISK Star Wars
• Power Grid
• Thunderstone
• Pandemic: On the Brink
• Mystery of the Abbey

Good overall games (under an hour):

• Confusion
• Smallworld
• Code 777
• Dixit
• Lemming Mafia
• Roll Through the Ages
• Stone Age
• Memoir ’44
• Survive: Escape from Atlantis
• Back to the Future the card game

Fast and short games to play multiple times:

• Hive
• Tsuro
• Knock Your Blocks Off
• Incan Gold
• Ligretto Dice
• Martian Dice
• Bears
• Spot It
• Got ‘Em
• Fasttrack
• You’ve Been Sentenced

Party games for the whole gang:

• Sounds Like a Plan
• Word on the Street
• Say Anything Family
• Train of Thought

As you’ve noticed, a number of these games are ones we haven’t done reviews of yet. So hopefully we’ll also take some time this weekend to film some more game reviews and give you great ideas of the best family board games to give as gifts this year.

Will we get to play them all? Extremely unlikely (but one can dream).

Regardless of what we play, we’re looking forward to a lot of fun.

And we hope you have a very enjoyable time with your family as well!

* We realize that Thanksgiving is a U.S. holiday. But we also know that the thousands of visitors to our site from other countries around the world have their own special celebrations that allow them to take time with their families as well. Enjoy your special family holidays.