Saturday, May 29, 2010

Wheeee! A Wii!

Not long after we got married, Utah Dad's parents bought a Nintendo 64. Utah Dad's five year old nephew begged for help playing Mario and before long we were wasting amazing amounts of time attempting to rescue Peach from the evil clutches of Bowser. The addiction was so bad, that we even had Mario dreams. Once Peach was safe, we discovered MarioKart. Utah Dad, his brother and I would too often stay up until two in the morning racing and talking. Oh, waking up in the morning was hard.

Realizing that we had a problem, Utah Dad and I put the video games behind us and decided that especially when we had children we would not cave to the pressure to buy a gaming system for our home. Our resolve strengthened when we met our oldest son. Neal has an extremely obsessive nature. He only has to play a game for a little while before it becomes an addiction. Needless to say, he loves to visit his relatives that have gaming systems (pretty much all of them). He has begged us for years for a Wii and we have resisted.

Until now. This school year, we used a Wii as a (very powerful) reward/bribe to motivate Neal to do well and be good at school. He did and he did and the school year came to an end and we had to make good. We now own a Wii. Our Wii's name is "Privilege". She belongs to Utah Dad and I and time playing the Wii is moderated and can be earned or lost. We didn't buy any additional games yet. Those will also be earned.

We'll see how it goes. This is uncharted and scary territory for us.

2 comments:

Rheanna said...

Hyrum would really like a Wii too....good luck! We'll see how it goes at your house before we get one :o)

Catey said...

This totally cracks me up-our Wii was Aaron's bday gift, not a kid gift or a family gift for this specific reason! All the games and controllers are kept put away in our bedroom so that the kids have to have us get them out for them. When they earn the chance to play, we're more than happy to dole it all out, but we have the nice fail safe of them not having unlimited access to it! It's great. :)
Also, though it's pricey, I am SO glad we got the Wii Fit stuff-my kids prefer that to any of the other games, and I'm more than happy that they want to play video games that work up a sweat. It's also a nice rainy day option when they can't be outside terrorizing each other in the yard!