Scrabble and Scrabulous

The first board game I bought for T was Scrabble (the Nostalgic Edition--in a pretty wood box with real wood tiles!). From the time I began to enjoy spelling, I've loved to play Scrabble. My family would play sometimes, which was always interesting because you have master spellers, like momma, good spellers, like daddy and my older siblings, and then the baby spellers, my younger sister and me. So the little ones would spell words like CAT, ATE, or IN, while momma would place words that used up all 7 of her tiles (50 point bonus!), adding on to my small words, spelling things like "ARTICULate." Of course, even momma was blown away when we would play with my Grammy. Grammy must have grown up playing Scrabble, or maybe she dreams about it at night, but she is THE Scrabble master. Grammy could figure out a word like "DiScOMbOBuLate" filling in spaces between already-formed words, still using all 7 tiles, AND using several other words' points. I swear she gets at least 80 points every turn. Anyway, I also was recently hooked on the facebook version, Scrabulous (thanks, R, now my facebook time is monopolized by trying to beat your score!). If facebook is the boon of homework, Scrabulous is the boon of facebook! It's fun, really. I enjoy logging on only to find that one of the letters I needed has appeared on the board! Sometimes, though, some people score 80 points in one turn (just like Grammy) :P So to practice, I have brought out T's and my little Scrabble game. We have it set up on our "game" table (a small, square fold-away table from Target that has a checkerboard printed on it). We sit on the floor and play lingering games of Scrabble. If board games like these occupy our evenings more often than watching movies, I don't think I'll mind (and I really like watching movies--especially if there's popcorn). Hopefully I'll increase my vocabulary, too!