Autumn helps daddy open his Dice Tower Secret Santa Gift.

You know we like to play games. Playing board games has increasingly become a social outlet for us ever since Eric McLaughlin introduced us to Catan in 2002. We have become good friends with a number of people at the table playing games. In Hawaii our main social outlet outside of the church has been in a board game club.

So it makes sense that we played a lot of games this year, 405 to be exact. 86 of those were children’s games we played with Autumn.

Many of the games we played this year were new to us. In total we played 47 games new games. Many of those we only played once at our gaming group and will likely never play again. It isn’t that they were bad. We just don’t own them. We own all of our most played games, which you can see below.

One funny development this year has been Autumn’s interest in “daddy’s games.” Whenever we get a new game, which is every few months, she wants to play the game. What that means is she wants to help punch out the cardboard pieces. She is always disappointed the next day when she can’t punch out the game again.

Below are a few quick lists I made of the games that we played in 2011.

I just got the message that my next board game is in the mail. It is a train game called Steam. It’s kind of like Ticket to Ride, except you ship goods along the routes for money (points). It is more complicated and I can’t wait to take the next step in train games. I’ve already downloaded a few alternate maps, including Middle Earth.

I want board games. Teresa wants coffee and other fun beverages. If we both bought all we wanted of either it would really hurt our bank accounts. So we have come up with this system to satisfy each other and our bank account. We each get $15 a month. It accumulates if we don’t spend it all in a month. That’s it.

Teresa gets to go to Starbucks a few times during the month and get her beverage fix. I get to get a new game ever 3-4 months. It works great.

We aren’t always the best at staying on top a budget. Usually it isn’t a problem. We are very frugal. We spend less than we make. But not having a clear budget means no clear boundaries. What’s an appropriate amount for coffee or games? For someone like me the answer can be that anything is too much. I can be a bit close fisted with money. Before our present system I would think, “I can’t believe she went to coffee so many times” when I finally got around to looking at our receipts and Teresa had spent $15 during the month. And she would cringe if I talked about maybe buying a game.

We don’t really spend less now than before, but we have boundaries. With boundaries has come a small amount of freedom. There is the freedom to use the money. But the greater freedom has been internal, at least for me. I no longer stress when Teresa says she went to Starbucks. Instead I’m happy for her. I’m glad she gets joy out of a latte. And she isn’t stressed when I tell her I would like to buy a game, which costs a lot more than a coffee. We are more able to share in each others’ joy because of the boundaries.

I could get all deep at this point and talk about God and other boundaries that are good for marriage. Or I could talk about parenting and boundaries. That’s what I would do if this were a sermon. But it’s not.

So here is a “hurrah” to boundaries bringing joy to my marriage!