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Christmas Updates | |
December 26th, 2017 | |
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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 | |