| ---------------------------------------- | |
| Christmas Updates | |
| December 26th, 2017 | |
| ---------------------------------------- | |
| Do you have friends or family who send you one of those | |
| end-of-year newsletters as a Christmas card? If you're not | |
| familiar, they tend to be summaries of the major events and | |
| achievements of the year for each family member. They're often | |
| formatted badly and feature a giant family photo as a header. All | |
| in all, super cheesy. | |
| I thought about writing one of those here as a Gopher Christmas | |
| Update, but I think I'll spare everyone. Instead I just wanted to | |
| drop a couple notes about how my Christmas day went. | |
| My son is five and the absolute perfect age for Christmas | |
| awesomeness. He was really into everything about the season from | |
| the start. This year he was paying attention to all the holiday | |
| songs and asking us what they were about. We watched about 15 | |
| Christmas movies, including such classics as Home Alone and Ernest | |
| Saves Christmas. We drove around to look at lights, and we looked | |
| at Google Earth to talk about Santa and his travels. Life has been | |
| pretty good this season. | |
| On Christmas morning he had a bunch of presents to open and a few | |
| surprises from Santa. The toys were all a big hit and he managed | |
| to play with just about everything all in one day. Although there | |
| were a lot of things he asked for, there are two surprise gifts | |
| that I expect to become the favorites in the long run: | |
| 1) Legos! I got the classic lego box with 144 pieces for him. | |
| I don't want him to get into Lego Sets. They're too expensive | |
| and too restrictive. He seems to be of the same mind. He | |
| built a whole city last night, complete with rotating | |
| restaurant tower and space ships. In a couple months I'll | |
| bust out all my legacy legos and toss them his way as well. | |
| 2) GameBoy Color! I grabbed one of these at a cool game shop in | |
| Myrtle Beach. I also picked up all 3 Zelda games for the | |
| system, Pokemon Silver, and Super Mario World. He's still | |
| a bit young for the games, but he likes watching me play | |
| Nintendo (he has my old system) and he tries occasionally. | |
| I expect this to sit around for most of the year, but it'll | |
| prime him for some amazing classic gaming. | |
| I'm working as hard as I can to build an appreciation for | |
| imagination in his play and games. The classic NES and GB | |
| games fit right in. They're simplistic, but also challenging. | |
| He worked with me, directing my choices, as we beat The | |
| Guardian Legend earlier this year. I think it's good for his | |
| growth to experience games that really challenge you and | |
| don't let you just skip the hard parts or show you how to get | |
| by with a ghost. Trial and error and perserverence! | |
| Speaking of games that require perserverence, I beat the first | |
| playthrough of Escape Goat last week and I'm working on the second | |
| set now. There's some insanely tricky boards. If you like puzzle | |
| games, or goats, or both, pick it up on GOG or Steam. | |
| I hope you all had a good holiday. Cheers | |