Thursday, December 26, 2019

I used to do an Advent Calendar for my grandchildren but twenty-five days times seven got to be too expensive and mind-boggling to find that many treats/toys/whatever’s to put in the pockets. Each family now has an Advent Calendar with a set of ornaments that they can put out every day for the twenty-five days. So for the last few years I’ve been sending each family a 12 Days of Christmas box.

This game starts on December 13 and there is an activity/game/whatever for every day until December 24. I have fun picking things to put in the packages and I hope the kids (parents included in this one) have fun with what I picked.

The game always starts with everyone picking a wrapped gift. Throughout the twelve days that gift is passed around depending on the roll of a dice. At the end of it, everyone always gets a gift. There was a glitch a few years ago where someone ended up with more than one gift and someone ended up without one. I’ve amended the rules to avoid this.

This year’s activities included some word searches. I tried to match the words to an activity that each of the kids were involved with. The topics were gymnastics, Fortnite, hockey, curling, social media and arts & crafts. The idea was for a specific person to start the game and then it went around the table until all the words were found. I think there were a few “skip outs” on this one so I may not include it another year.

I wanted to include a card game in the box and I decided it was time to introduce Spoons to my family. I neglected to tell them that when the McKnights play there is often physical damage done when grabbing across the table for a spoon!

One of my favourite activities in this year’s box was a Who Am I game (parents were not allowed to participate). I went through some old family photos and sent copies to everyone. They had until Christmas Eve to guess who they were looking at. Some I thought of as easy, some not so easy and, to be honest, there were some in there just to make the parents remember!

There were two actual gifts included in this year’s rendition. One of our quilters has often talked about an Apples to Apples game so every family got one. I’ll be looking forward to playing when I next visit. I have collected so many Christmas ornaments over the years that I don’t have room to display them all so each family received one that I was willing to part with.