Lately

Lately, almost every night,

we sit around our little dining room table at night and play games.

This won't last because soon there will only be 3 of us living here

and then only 2.

For now, there are 4 of us, the perfect number for games.

We play

 hearts, 

a game our neighbors taught us that is actually called "Oh Hell" but we call it 7-1-7, 

we've recently added Scrabble.

Ryan often brings up wanting to play the Game of Thrones board game

but we never do.  Mostly because of me...I hate those kind of games.  Like Monopoly and Risk and Game of Thrones (though he swears I would like it).

Anyway, it's been so much fun!

We joke and laugh and gang up on Frank.

We write asterisks in our score book when someone does something dumb or says something funny.

We think of our friends, the Mattinsons, whenever we do this because they introduced the idea of a score book and asterisks to us.

Before that, we would just keep score on any old scrap of paper nearby.

We recently filled up our first score book and Frank can't wait to go through it and see how many times he has won.

Frank gloats about winning all the time

and then goes on to win most of the time

but occasionally not.

We gloat when we beat him

and give him a hard time about being too arrogant.

The kids check their phones too much

and miss their turns.

We harass Frank for not being able to spell.

He takes it all in stride.

thankfully.

Frank, whose eyes are really dry these days,

(a side effect from his bone marrow transplant)

sits with his eyes closed when it starts getting late...

but he still keeps playing.

Carter will sometimes say he doesn't want to play or isn't in the mood,

but we harass him into playing and he ends up having fun.

It used to be that we would stop at a decent hour because of school or work

but lately we've been playing till midnight

or until Frank's eyes just can't take it anymore and he begs to go to sleep.

It's summer after all and our days are numbered until Carter leaves.

It feels like we need to cram in a bunch of family time while we can.

I'm going to miss it, this little nightly ritual of ours.