We did a little driving with the kids over the last few weeks – and I must say it’s a bit nerve-wracking to ride in a vehicle when they start playing the yellow car game.

We’ll be calmly and quietly driving down the road when all of a sudden kids will hit the roof of the car and yell “Yellow Car” (or truck or van or bus.)

I guess the idea is that you want to be the first to spot the yellow vehicle, slap the roof of the car and yell it out. Whoever has the most amount of hits at the end of the journey wins.

Now Jan and I play a similar game trying to spot Land Cruisers. It started on our honeymoon. The older the Land Cruiser, the more points you get. But we don’t hit the roof and yell – we just smugly point it out to each other and announce our new point total. 🙂

Even my folks make a game of spotting trains when they’re on the road delivering Winnebagos. Ten points for every train – another 10 for whoever spots the engine first and 50 points for a passenger train or caboose. Again – no hitting involved – just a little bragging!

These are both quiet, calm games with that don’t sound like we’ve just been hit by artillery fire.

I guess I shouldn’t complain. At least the kids are hitting the car and not each other. Remember the slug bug game we used to play? Whenever we saw a Volkswagon Beetle we would hit the person next to us and yell “Slug bug”.

It was a great game until somebody got hit too hard and Dad had to lay down the law.  🙂

I will have to admit the kids are good at spotting yellow vehicles.

Really good.

On a recent adventure with my sister-in-law Julie, the kids were totally dominating us in the yellow car game. They were slapping that roof before our brains could register the fact that a car was coming – let alone what color it was.

So we decided to make up our own rules. 🙂

Anything yellow was game.

We saw a yellow house and slapped the roof of the van – “yellow house”.

We saw a yellow mailbox. Slap – “yellow mailbox!”

Slap – “yellow swing set!”

Slap – “yellow curtains!”

Then we got a little silly! You know that broken yellow line that divides a two lane road?

Yep! We did it.

Slap – “Yellow line!”

Slap – “Yellow line!”

Slap – “Yellow line!”

Slap – “Yellow line!”

The kids were not impressed.

But we sure had fun!

Slap – “Yellow line!”

We decided if you can’t beat them – just change the rules! 🙂