Boardgames are great. Have you guys ever tried Rummikub? We've been playing that since I was a little kid. We usually do a variant of the official rules to allow more matches (for example, I'm told that offically you can't vertically chain a straight to a horizontal three or four of a kind, but we allow that in our rules).
As for cards, when I was a kid we always played crazy eights, but then when I got older we switched to hearts. Hearts can be ruthless but is a lot of fun.
I've never played Hearts except on the computer. In my neck of the woods the big card game is Euchre. That's like a Michigan staple. I have played Rummikub before, but it has been quite a while. @mrsbozz and I often play Phase 10 against each other and Five Crown. She like Skipbo too.