50th Birthday Surprise!

With Covid making a large party impossible, it was a challenge to make Scruffy’s 50th birthday special.

Sure, he said that all he really wanted was to eat a good meal together as a family and maybe play a boardgame … but we do that a lot. It’s not every day that the man you love turns so very ancient. 

And so I got to work researching something that he would never get for himself, a boardgame table!!!

What is a boardgame table? Princess Leia Freyja wants to know, too. She was quick to investigate our old dining room table when Theo and Brennan were “sneaking” it past Scruffy. There is half a chance that he noticed them, ha!

Once the boys had dismantled our old table and carried the many huge and very heavy boxes that contained Scruff’s boardgame table into our dining room, they were ready to give Dad his gift. Unfortunately, Scruff was still working.

Once Scruff successfully got all of the snow that had packed around the chimney to slide off the lodge roof, it was time for his surprise!

It was just like putting together his own Lego!

An hour later, the boardgame table was complete! How is a boardgame table different than every other table out there? 

Well, playing on a hard surface makes it difficult to pick up all those little pieces. The cards are more likely to bend and the tiny little discs are super hard to pick up. Many gamers spread a big mat across their table … but that has to be rolled up every time the family wants to eat.

In fact, the entire elaborate game (that can take 3 hours … sometimes 11) must be picked up before everyone can eat. Some games take forever just to set up. Not so with Scruffy’s new table!

There is a sunken gaming surface inside the table that has a nice matt for playing on. Then the table’s wooden leaves can be placed on top when it is dinner time!

Now they can even play giant and complicated games that take several days to complete and we can also eat! We just put the wooden top on and the game stays as it is underneath.

What’s actually happened is that Scruff sets up a super-long and insanely detailed game on the inside of the table … and then sets up a shorter game on top on the wooden surface. Two games at once! We have had a decided lack of actual eating experiences with this new table. Nonetheless, I’m glad that he’s loving his gift.