‘Twas the night before Christmas with Sprout drifting with one eye open, watching us solve riddles to the melodies of Christmas carols!

From the 1st of December until Christmas Eve, we looked forward to opening the tiny boxes of our Advent calendars each day. Derek surprised me the itty bitty holiday Funko pops! With a little hot glue, fishing line, and earring hooks, I converted their tiny faces with beady eyes into Christmas ornaments to hang on our tree. As a Star Wars nut, it was a little bit of luxury to open a numbered cardboard door every day after school with a childlike wonder if it should be a storm trooper, Vader, or Yoda this time!

Derek’s Advent calendar included a little investigative teamwork like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson to solve the mystery of the missing Hollywood Star in Exit: The Game.

Each day begins with a story about the next scene of events that we will need to uncover as we make our way through the sets of an abandoned film studio while trying to make our escape and save the kidnapped movie star.

The goal of each room is to solve the puzzle and find the code that we can put into the decoder to determine which room is the next door to advance to. Sometimes we get a little stuck and needed to fold up part of the helpful hints booklet to help solve the puzzle but we were able to figure it out eventually.

Whenever a new door is opened, the first step is to shine a flashlight and look for clues or even turn the calendar box different upside down and sideways to pop open a secret compartment.

We’ve had to strum a rubber-band keyboard, follow the travels of a cat from each room throughout the previous days, and decode the correct date to travel back in time to solve the riddle, but always we are looking for a set of three digits to escape this room and enter the next. It’s been a wild ride!

As the lights of the Christmas tree sparkled into the wee hours of Christmas Eve, we finished with a couple board games before calling it a night. Sprout burrowed her head under her paw finally giving into the cat nap.

Christmas Eve games:

1. Santa’s Workshop is a competitive race to Christmas Day where we are the elves completing toy orders for Santa’s sleigh!

2. Let’s Go to Japan! is a game of travel between Kyoto and Tokyo where we fill our itineraries with the most fulfilling vacation activities for victory points.

3. In the Guild of Merchant Explorers, we chart our path over the terrain and high seas with tiny cubes exploring the distant lands in search of treasure.

Until next time with our latest adventures and board games…

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!