Making the Super Bowl Fun for EVERYONE

Let me preface this post by first stating that my family watches little to no football all season long.  But you still HAVE to watch the Super Bowl right?  If not for the football, then at least for the commercials, the party or better yet the food! 

Today I wanted to share with you some ideas that we've come up with the past few years to make the Super Bowl a fun and enjoyable experience for our whole family.  When the kids started getting older, teachers and friends at school would always be hyped up about what team they were picking, so the girls started picking a team too and asking to watch the game.  They were also quite interested in watching because their Dad would buy them squares at his office and they wanted to see if they would win anything.  So we decided we could definitely make this a super, fun family activity each year and here's how we do it.

1) PICKING SIDES: 
A game is extra fun and exciting when you have people rooting for both sides.  We always ask the kids who they are voting for and then make our choice after they've picked (so as to not influence them).  This year, the 3 girls are voting for the Giants (solely because of the movie "Madagascar" . . . ALL HAIL THE NEW YORK GIANTS!!) and my hubby, my boy and I are going for the Patriots (simply because we think they will win).  The kids usually make up signs for their team to hang up around the room and break out their pom poms and do cheers when the urge hits.

2) PRIZE SQUARES:
Instead of paying money and doing the office squares, we started doing our own at home.  The kids love to sit and help their Dad make the squares and they especially love getting to take turns picking their own squares.  If you don't want to make your own squares, you can print them out here: http://www.docsports.com/pdf/super-bowl-squares.pdf
This is by far the biggest hit of the ENTIRE afternoon.  We then have prizes for the winning squares.  They are never anything big or fancy, but the kids go nuts for them.  Prizes in the past have included a can of soda, a box of assorted donuts (that they can pick one of if they win), candy bars, play-do, etc.  Fair warning:  it also can cause a few tears and some major cases of the grumpies if you have kids who are impatient, poor losers.  At the end of each quarter at our house, whoever is on the winning square picks a major prize and whoever has the 'reverse' winning square picks a minor prize. 

*There's other fun games you could play as well such as having everyone guess ahead of time how many commercials will involve animals, beer, cars, bikinis, etc; playing Pass The Cup (with candy or prizes); or making guesses on which team will have the most interceptions, or whether or not the celebrity anthem singer will lip sync or totally botch it up, etc.   Heidi even found these super cute Super Bowl Bingo cards from Studio DIY that are so cute.  My kids LOVE playing Bingo so I think I'm going to have to add these into our fun this year.  Check them out for yourself here: http://www.studiodiy.com/2012/01/31/super-bowl-bingo-free-printable/.

3) FOOD, FOOD, FOOD:
In conclusion, no matter if your team loses, you won no squares, etc, the day will still not be a waste if there is TONS of good food involved.  I like to keep it simple so that I can actually enjoy the Super Bowl too.  The main dish is usually something I could make the day before like egg salad sandwiches or chicken salad croissants and then we just have tons of side snacks like 7-layer dip, homemade nachos, guacamole, chex mix, popcorn, soda, etc.  One idea I read recently was to have a "Souper Bowl" party and that would be a great idea too since soups are so easy to make earlier on in the day.

If nothing else in this post grabbed your interest, at least watch the Super Bowl during the 3rd quarter for this commercial - appropriated named "The Bark Side".  Technically, it's a TRAILER for their Super Bowl commercial.  Who even does that???  We saw it a few weeks ago, and all sat there mesmerized the entire time because it was so cute, clever, creative and entertaining - plus we were wondering what it was even advertising.  I love it!!!  Volkswagen seems to have found their groove with their Star Wars themed commercials!

Now go and get ready for your own Super Bowl Party and let me know how it goes! 

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