Yahtzee!

You know how you’ll sometimes go a long time between doing things you enjoy, and then when you finally do, you’re saying things like “why don’t we do this more often?”

Well at our house we recently started playing Yahtzee again. It’s a game we all enjoy, but probably hadn’t played in 6 months or more. Then a few days ago, on an evening with no kids, no outside obligations, nothing better to do, Cindy and I decided to play a few rounds. And in a completely unexpected move, she got a Yahtzee!

Just a few rolls later, I scored one too!

That was fun and exciting, and we decided to leave the box out, so we’d remember to play more often. Well, last weekend, our beloved Elder Cram got his transfer notice… We have a tradition that on the Saturday before Transfer Monday, we take our missionaries out to ice cream at Mad Jack’s. (note to self: I need to blog about Mad Jack’s!) After the ice cream, Cram saw the Yahtzee box and declared that he HAD to play one more time, because he’d never actually won a game at our house. Not Cover Your Assets, not Speed Scrabble, not an earlier night of Yahtzee, and certainly not Guitar Hero, Excite Truck or Wii Sports... because, well, he never actually played any of those at our house. You know, two years of mission work at the exclusion of worldly entertainment.

I thought it was a great idea, we got set up to play, and we gave Cram the first turn. No rolling to see who goes first, this was his night! And sure enough, the first roll of the game resulted in this:
Yep, not just a Yahtzee, but my personal favorite Yahtzee, five 1’s! He was off to a great start, and the game kept going his way. I think it was because of the lucky souvenir hat he was wearing. But oh, what is a night of gaming without some added drama? See, I also gave Costales a souvenir hat. And apparently his was also lucky. Because right as it looked like a lock for Cram to win the game…

And just to further one-up Cram, he rolled five 2’s. And when the last dice had been thrown and the scores tallied, Cram lost by TWO POINTS. He murmured something about not being able to win a game in “this house”, put on his bike helmet over his lucky souvenir hat (they’d already used up their monthly miles allowance on the car) and pedaled off into the night. Since Sunday was our last chance to hang out with him, we invited them over for Brownies and goodbyes. Naturally, as soon as he got there, he demanded another shot at winning a game. We obliged, and it was pretty even, everyone doing okay, nobody really taking the lead. Then, on what would be his last turn, Cram said “If I get a Yahtzee on this roll, I WIN!” It took him all three tries, but the man got that which he spoke into being! Somehow we got so caught up in the magic of the moment that we never did get around to actually adding up the scores, or even taking a picture! We’ll just let him believe that he won. After all, if he’s got the kind of power to call a Yahtzee into being, I don’t think I want to mess with him too much…