Memories

 Months ago we had a game night with some dear friends and their family.  They brought several games to play.  One particular game was a bit of an eye opening experience.  I can't remember what the game is called but basic idea is as follows.  Everyone has a tile and marker to write their answer.  Someone asks a question and you write your answer down as a % to which you agree with the statement/question then without seeing other people's answers, you put yours down in order of least to greatest.  Ok that was a weird explanation.  The real result that was surprising came with the questions "How important are family traditions?"  My kids wrote their percentages down and put them clear at the beginning of the row.  Meaning they didn't think anyone could think family traditions were less important than they felt.  

Sure enough, they put 0% importance on family traditions and simply said that they didn't think we had any.  Now all the adults were feeling a bit bad for me because they were even aware of all the things I try to do around holidays.  I wasn't sad.  Honest.  I was just surprised that all the work I put into the various activities were really not all that important to them.  I actually had bumped into someone's opinion instagram post that suggested doing a poll with your kiddos before major family holidays about expected fun and food that made things feel special for them.  I confess that I will still do activities for the various holidays because it brings me joy.  But glad to know that I really don't have any pressure from the kids to make things magical for them.  So, today for example, I didn't do my usual learn about Martin Luther King Jr activities and food.  We just had a good conversation about why they didn't have school and the price many had to pay to try and get kind treatment.

For Christmas, since all of my kids are non Santa believers, I went back to the idea of the kids buying gifts for their siblings doing a random draw.  Mia took it a step further and purchased gifts for everyone.  But the kids thought that was all Christmas was going to be.  Meanwhile, I had been painting and building various Christmas characters out of all the boxes coming to our home prior to Christmas.  I had an idea that stemmed from last Christmas's opening game.  Last year, I wrapped each person's gifts in the same wrapping paper.  Everyone had their own print but there was no names written on the gifts.  Instead, they each got their own scavenger hunt to find their wrapping paper.  My favorite scavenger hunt was the one I found for Fernando.  He had clips of words from famous Christmas songs that lead to another clue.  You could hear him singing around the house desperately trying to figure out the correct missing word.  

It was also a bit of a trick because for Christmas itself we had flown to Costa Rica which had its own fun delays and sicknesses etc.  We came home in time for New Years and I did my tradition of New Year's tree with activities.  I love watching the kids get excited for what each other gets. 

Anyway, back to Christmas 2023.  After we did the kid gifts exchange, my parents came over for the day.  They are currently serving a mission in Alaska and live in Wasilla which is about 45 mins away.  They had a cute gift that my mom made.  These cute little gnomes that she hand kitted.  They looked incredible.  The last gift under the tree was a simple Christmas bag with a silly poem I wrote and QR code to the Left Right story. 

POEM:

Your sibling gifts were magical! it’s fun to give And get 

Surprise It doesn’t have to end. I hope you didn’t fret

But of course we haven’t made it easy so listen up my sweets

Some Christmas friends helped hide your things Each one with challenge you must complete

This starts it off with all of you gathered round from young to old

Those envelops have clues you’ll need listen to the rules and story as it unfolds 

 

The link went to One Simple Party' blog.  I had everyone get in a circle Oldest to Youngest.  I had gifts for my parents so I had my mom stand in for me and so I could read the story.  I handed an envelop to everyone in the circle and started the story.  This story had the unique direction of "all around". The all around cue meant everyone gave their envelop to the person across from them. I can't tell you how many times I drew a diagram starting with one person to find out where that envelop would end up. It looked like one of Javi's mazes he loves to do.  I tried it so many times and with some many different starting positions.  And I still was nervous.  It went off without a hitch, but I still double checked.  Now that everyone had their correct envelop, we had a clue to search for the first Christmas character.  

First off was a reindeer.  Ok, use some imagination and think about designing things with just cardboard boxes.  Don't think about all the creative work people have done with cardboard.  I felt like the inversion of the boxes to avoid needing to cover up the various amazon or Walmart logo placement was enough extra effort.  The head had a game of ring toss. The winners got to open their presents first.

 

After the game and presents, they found a clue that took them to the garage to find a ginger bread house.  The front door opened to a small box inside the big box. It was full of brown bags painted like ginger bread houses.  There were random treats (including oranges) or a post it notes.  Some even had $ hidden under the treat.  

The game was inspired by this post on Facebook.  They had numbered bags (like seen above) and numbers in a cupcake pan.  I added the bonus of colored stickers and colored ping pong balls.  Everyone got two tries per turn.  If you got the same colored ping pong ball into a space that had a matching colored number, you got to look at the number bag you landed on and decide to keep it or randomly select another bag.  It was surprisingly hard to get the balls into spaces for me, but everyone else seemed to do it rather well.  After the game and presents, they were led to the guest room to find the snowman.  

I felt pretty proud about the hat having a book for the rim of the hat.  The top part of the hat had the game.  We had to scoop "snowball" cotton balls into a container but used the scarf to make it hard to see.  It was so funny to watch.  I went last so I got the advantage of seeing the best way to go about it.  

After this game and present opening, the clue led us to the game room.  This particular character had no game to play because all the gifts were games to play together including the track.  The track box had a new backboard for our indoor basketball game that had been busted by some slam dunks. We also had some board games: Oh no! Volcano, El Dorado (or Dorito as Javi calls it), Kites.  There was also
a diamond Christmas picture, and Mario Wonder Switch Game.

Finally behind the couch there was the candle.  The flame had Pictionary Air.  I custom made some cards that had various Christmasy clues.  With the stylus, people took turns drawing their clues in the air while everyone else tried to guess what they were drawing.  The catch is the person drawing can't see the screen.  The stylus casts the light drawings onto the screen.  

It was a lot work planning, making sure the correct gifts were in the correct characters, hiding the characters (ok, that was easy since I always do stuff like this for my church callings. The kids just assumed it was for activity day boys), and then having them ready Christmas morning without drawing attention to them.  I loved it so much.  It spread the Christmas fun for most of the day.  We only had two hours to clean up and get the space ready for our Christmas Dance.  This year we invited two families to join us.  Mia did the food.  Fernando put together the play list that builds to a climax song and even has an interpretive dance moment.  I sent my parents to the USO to deliver the baked goods we made for the airman who couldn't go home for the holiday.  Magically things were ready to go at the designated party time.  There were treat and finger foods galore.  Super impressive since Mia had 4 wisdom teeth removed a week prior.