Heather Hodges

Last Sunday after church, Wade and I took the boys out for Indian food at a great little cafe here in Tulsa. The food was excellent, as usual, and as we were heading home he turned into the parking lot of Circuit City unexpectedly. He told us to wait in the car as he dashed into the store “Just to look at something.” As the boys and I waited, I noticed a guy walking out of the store cradling a medium sized white box. Shortly after he got in his car a family emerged from the store. The dad was holding the same white box and the two kids were jumping up and down at his side in excitement. At that point it dawned on me, they have a Wii !!!!! We have been searching for weeks for this coveted and highly elusive electronic commodity. Every store we would enter had either just sold their last one or they hadn’t had any for weeks and didn’t know when a new shipment would arrive. So when I saw two suspicious white boxes exiting a store in succession, the boys and I jumped out of the car and headed inside. I called to the family as I passed, “Is that a Wii?” The dad responded, “Yes, but I think they are selling the last one right now, you’ d better hurry.” At this point the boys knew the cause for my sudden dash towards the store and became equally as excited as I was. As we entered the store I saw the last Wii at the counter being purchased. I sadly told the boys that it was too late, that guy over there in the black shirt was buying the very last Wii. Caleb hung his head slightly in disappointment, but my astute 5 year old, Elijah said, “But Mom, that’s Dad!” So we now in turn became the family walking out of the store, dad carrying the white box and the two kids jumping up and down at his side.

As I’ve said before, I am not a fan of video games. I think they are a colossal waste of time and encourage children (and grown men) to become sedentary trigger happy couch potatoes. However, this is the not the case with the Wii. It is a high energy, up on your feet, interactive experience for the whole family. We have had tons of fun this week and we look forward to a long winter of family game nights.

Wii Parenting Tip - Privileges are Powerful: Wade and I have found that the Wii is also a great motivating tool to encourage our sons to clean their rooms, eat their asparagus, and refrain from assault and battery on each other.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 at 11:28 am and is filed under Bringing Up Boys, Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.