My Real Life

Whenever people are coming to look at the house, the monkeys and I head out of Dodge and go to Grandma’s house.

Grandma’s house is always full of stuff to play with that, if kept at our house, wouldn’t be looked at twice.

However, the mere fact that they are “Grandma’s toys” makes them utterly fun and cool to play with.

For example, we have a piano.

The kids love to play the piano.

But, Grandma has a Clavinova.

Way cooler.

Grandma also has this wooden Noah’s Ark toy that is full of wooden animals.

When I tell you that no one would even look at this toy at our house, I’m not exaggerating.

Of course, at Grandma’s house, you also have Grandpa who will hold up the elephant and say things like, “Oh, I’m just going to put this panda bear right over here,” to which the kids will reply in outrage “Grandpa!!!  It’s an elephant.”

This game can continue for hours.

Grandma’s house also has Grandpa’s ancient Lego set, which is so ancient that they weren’t even called Lego’s but “Block City.”

They are so cool.

I used to spend the majority of my summers at my Grandma’s house in Ohio, and while I was there, hours and hours of my time were spent playing with these building blocks.

Now, they are so old, they barely snap together anymore, but it doesn’t dissuade the kids.

Grandma also has this life-sized black labrador stuffed dog.

Creeps me out a little, but Baby Monkey absolutely thinks it is the coolest.

He also seems to think it’s a horse to be ridden, but what can you do?

Finally, Grandma has awesome games.

Particularly, she has Skunk.

Skunk is a game from my Dad’s childhood that I grew up playing with at my Grandma’s in Ohio.

My Grandma and I would play this dice-rolling game for hours and hours on their screened in porch.

I loved that game so much.

I swore my parents had it.

They swore they didn’t.

They did.

And yes, this is the ORIGINAL game that I played with my Grandma.

The address of that company is so old, it still has the mailing district listed for where exactly in Minneapolis it was located.

Love old stuff.

Needless to say, although we’d love to bring the game home, we’re leaving it at Grandma’s.

I doubt it would remain in such pristine condition at our house.

It’s a great game.

I still maintain, however, that if you brought any one of these toys or games to our house, they would immediately cease to be interesting.

The magic of Grandma’s house.