First, we were fortunate enough to bring Tod's dad here for a visit over the holidays. It'd been a couple of years since he visited so it was great he was willing to fly out to be with us. There were very many games of Skip Bo, as always, and not too much running around, which was nice.
I wanted to write about a fun new thing we did this year. The kids' big gifts from Santa were pretty big gifts - Reed got a new iPod Touch and Amy got a Nintendo 3DS. A wee bit pricey. And we got the kids a much-needed new laptop. It was kind of bad timing that this "need" came up right at Christmas, but we had to take care of it. The laptop the kids were using was our three-laptops-ago laptop - it wouldn't run the latest games and it also always had to be plugged in since it couldn't hold a charge.
It was both kids' biggest wish for Christmas, to get a new laptop. My first thought was we would just put the new laptop in the place of the old one and the kids would be excited to see it waiting there - maybe put a bow on it or something. But given that this was such a big, expensive gift - we couldn't just give it too them that easily. Plus Amy actually told us she thought that Santa might just do exactly that - put a new laptop in place of the old. So we couldn't do that! Then a few days before Christmas, a co-worker told me that for her son's big gift each year, they do a scavenger hunt to make him work for it a little. Brilliant! So that's just what we did. We put together a series of clues (okay, we mostly got the ideas from the internet!) that had the kids running from the freezer to the fireplace, to our bedroom, to the laundry room, to the mail box, etc. It was SO great! They really had a lot of fun with it, and were so happy to find the laptop at the end. I am so glad we did that and I think maybe we should do it again next year!
