Fun and Games at the Ack!Thbbbt! house

It used to bug me that many of our board games were missing playing pieces. I'd gotten into to habit of buying matching games at rummage sales (regardless of *their* missing pieces) and combining the two to make one complete set.

The hand-me-down Monopoly game from Grandma now has all its property cards and more pewter markers.
Mouse Trap now has a full set of trap pieces as well as extra replacement parts in case another plastic component snaps in half... again.

But sometimes, we have to make do with what we have.
And I have come to realize that sometimes, that's even better than having all the pieces.

We learned early that a stack of 2x2 Lego pieces makes a great place marker for any game.
Monopoly Jr has a red Oscar Meyer Weinie Whistle in place of its missing red car marker. It's always the first piece chosen.
Our Sorry! game is missing a yellow marker, so we've been using a yellow twist-off cap from an old soda promotional contest which reads "Please try again!" on the inside of the cap. We like sending someone back to Start just so we can flip up the cap and say, "Try again!"

Last night, we asked the boys to set up a board game for the family to play while the husband and I put together snacks. When we sat down to play, the husband and I discovered that our Lego markers would be competing against a bouncy ball and a frog driving a Jeep.

Is your family game night as fun as ours? :-)