Is That a Banana in Your Pocket?

We were out and about this weekend running some errands. Austin had informed me that McDonald’s now had Spiderman toys and that he definitely needed to go there and get one. So we made a deal. If he was good during all of Mom and Dad’s errands, we would stop for lunch at McDonald’s and he could get a Spiderman toy.

As it turned out, the errands didn’t take quite as long as expected so we had some time to kill. So off to DI we went (that’s Deseret Industries for those who don’t know, and it’s roughly equivalent to Goodwill, only this one’s run by Mormons). At any rate, there’s a DI in Federal Way that’s only about 15 minutes from our house, and we sometimes go there to kill some time. Our trips there usually end up with a new board game coming home with us. They cost at most $2, and we’ve come home from DI with some of our most often played and entertaining games. Austin gets to pick the game, and I enjoy picking through the book section where paperbacks are $0.50 and hardbacks are $3-$4.

This particular trip we ended up with an armload of books and the game Jumpin’ Monkeys (for a total cost of $13 – YEAH!). Austin couldn’t wait to get home and play it, after McDonald’s of course. Upon arriving home we put the game together. It’s a simple 4 piece tree with holes for the monkey’s to swing on. You simply place a monkey on your launcher and flip them up onto the tree, hoping one of their arms will catch in one of the holes. 4 players, 4 monkeys each, the first to get all their monkeys on the tree wins. This is the part of the game Austin loves. I found this picture of the game online which shows perfectly how it works:

The part that Luke loves is the bananas. Aside from flipping the monkeys onto the tree, every time you successfully land one, you get a cardboard banana. Thus, whoever lands all their monkeys in the tree and collects all their bananas wins the game. Luke could care less about the monkeys, but loves playing with the bananas. And this weekend he was wearing a little hoodie that has a pouch in the front. He loves to put things in his pouch and then show off what he has. He soon had all the bananas in his pouch and went running into the kitchen to show Angie.

“Mom, look. Is that a banana in my pocket?” he exclaimed. Sure enough, it was. A whole bunch of them!