Everyone Here Hates Twilight

So, I have this group of friends. And it's kind of a strange group to understand. It is made up of myself and Chuckie, my sisters, some of my cousins and their significant others, a couple of my best friends, and a couple of Laura's best friends. Like I said, kind of a strange mix of people. But for some reason, it works. We call this group our "game night group" (even though we occasionally hang out outside of game nights) because that's how this group started out. I can't remember when it first started, but awhile back we started having game nights. Everyone would meet at Laura and Anthony's house and we'd play Taboo, charades, and everything in between. A lot of our game nights were also always centered around an event- a birthday, a holiday or a celebration of something else. The game nights were usually always at Laura's, but sometimes at Elizabeth's, one time at my house (which was a major fail and will never happen again) and then once our group out-grew Laura and Anthony's apartment, we moved to Jennifer and Matt's house.

Games we've played together include Taboo, Twister, Things, Catch Phrase, Pictionary, Tele-pictionary (the best game ever!), Charades, Mafia (the worst game ever!), Ninja Tag, LRC, Boys vs Girls Battleship, and a variety of drinking games including Flip Cup and Moosehead. We've also even made up our own games, like Gourmet Races and Hold Your Phone Out While Someone Mass Texts Us All and See Whose Phone Gets the Text First.

Our all time favorite game to play together is charades. We always make up team names and draw for teams which I personally think is the most fun part of playing. The team names always end up being something ridiculous and are usually based on a joke on something that's been discussed earlier in the evening.  One night a discussion about Twilight vs. Harry Potter took place and it was discovered that everyone in the group dislikes Twilight. One thing led to another and eventually the team names for charades that night were Team Edward and Team Cedric. (Same actor, stars in both Twilight and Harry Potter.) On our most recent game night, the theme of the party was a going away party for myself, Chuckie and our cousin Cailtin who is moving to South Africa for the summer. So obviously, the teams that night were Team Boston and Team South Africa. We've had a lot of other great team names but most of them are too inappropriate to post on here. After we draw teams, each team makes up as many things as they can for the other team to act out. Some of the things people have had to act out before: Kate Gosselin, plastic, marsupial, "everyone here hates twilight," monkey business, Man Pig Bear Snail Bird, Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch, and so many more ridiculous things. Again, some are too inappropriate to list here.

I think our favorite game night tradition is our annual Christmas party. It's just like every other game night except we do a white elephant gift exchange which is always super fun/funny. Past gifts brought to the party have included UofL basketball tickets, a collage of pictures of Elizabeth, a box full of stuffed pigs and Jesus band-aids. This year we had a New Year's Eve game night party which proved to be a ton of fun. This past weekend, our game night/going away party happened to fall on Mother's Day Eve, so at 1 minute 'til midnight, we counted down to Mother's Day like it was New Year's Eve. A lot of our game nights also end up doubling as birthday celebrations which are some of my favorites because someone always brings a cake or cupcakes.

My favorite thing about this group of people and our game nights though, is that most of the things that happen at game night can't be explained. And if they were explained, no one else would find them as funny as we do. There is just something about this group of people that makes sense but at the same time, doesn't make any sense at all. And I love it.  This is a group I'm really going to miss once we are in Boston. I can't imagine how sad I'm going to feel the first time I see plans being made on Facebook or Twitter for a game night that I know we will not be able to go to.  These friends are all so important to us. We all celebrate each other's successes, feel sad with each other when someone is sad, and generally just have a damn good time together.

To the Everyone Here Hates Twilight group: we expect to be skyped in at least for a few minutes to say hi anytime you all have a game night and we are not there. Also, whenever you play charades from now on I think the team names should be Team Rachel and Team Chuckie so we will always be involved in game night even from a billion miles away. :)