What Christmas game swag did you give or receive?

Put your kids to work and push out a generic "art card set" that can be used as an expansion for games like Dixit and Mysterium. Throw that shit up on Kickstarter and they've just paid for their college educations.

Bojack wrote:

Gary Sax wrote: Those coupons are fucking awesome.

I'd Wager that they are not only awesome but are the single best thing EVER posted on this site.

In all honesty, they should probably just be on the front page of the site as a warning to norms.

I spent Christmas Day assembling or helping to assemble nearly 1400 pieces of Lego sets. Still hundreds to go. My Nephews got thousands more.

HEY GREAT, I can eat solid food again today! I kind of have an appetite!

I was totally buffaloed by that virus we all got...I was peeing from the wrong port, so to speak, Christmas morning. I'm only just now feeling recovered. My electrolytes, stomach PH, everything was completely tossed for a loop. There is a Christmas picture where me and my family are standing in front of my sister's tree and I am literally thinking "why am I standing here when I am supposed to be on my deathbed?"

Somehow we managed to have a good one, despite having to do clutch Christmas Eve shopping ("gift cards for everybody!") and barely being able to hold my eyes open Christmas day because I had been up until 5 am setting up a full rock band's worth of instruments in our living room. Santa brought River and Scarlett 3/4 scale Fender Squires, Sawtooth amps, a kid's drum kit, a microphone, and a full size Casio keyboard. Oh, and a bass courtesy of our own Brewmiester, which dazzled the kids because Santa brought daddy something. Got to play along with a Korean restaurant karaoke version of "Jingle Bells" kicked out by the Casio while the kids sang. That was good times right there, despite the GI woe.

Gave my wife a swarm of bees, literally. They're not coming until March, but we have a hive. She also got a Roomba (she is a cleaning fanatic), some custom jewelry, lots of things that smell, an awesome 1950s-era vintage wallet, and some other jive. She gave me a Fred Perry sweater which I absolutely love and a plane ticket to NYC, where she is going to be working at the end of January. Also a new EDC knife, because I always carry a blade and the clip on my trusty old Kershaw broke.

Gave the kids all of Bone and Amulet. River wanted a Gundam, so I got him a beginner level 1/60th scale one. He got the big Jurassic World Lego set with the Indominus Rex but no Chris Pratt. Scarlett got the Easy Bake and a natural foods cookbook for it. Moana dress and both of her sidekicks, Hei Hei and Pua. The only game stuff they got was Ice Cool and the NES Classic.

Then the Grandparents went bananas. You would not believe the avalanche of JUNK they foisted on them. It's not even sweet or cute or endearing. It is literally just piles and piles of stuff they don't really want and definitely don't need. It wasn't a total bust because I made an Amazon list and so there were some quality gifts, but PLEASE GOD do not give my kids more crayons or another "activity set" of any kind. My parents practically raid the shelves of TJ Maxx and Costco for their presents and we just wind up secretly returning almost everything. It makes me feel bad, but we literally could not fit everything into the Highlander to take it home.

For some reason, my parents gave both me and my wife Fitbits even though we have never expressed any interest in owning them. I don't know what to do with it. I don't need to be reminded to be healthy.

Also a really nice telescope, at random. And a zipline. And a giant box of food from TJ Maxx, almost none of which we will eat so it will get donated to charity.

My wife's parents were smart and just gave us money. And pies that I wish that I could have enjoyed because they were probably awesome.

And we still have these games to take to the hospital- we are trying to get that done by New Years so stay tuned. I've been trying to contact the giving coordinator there because I don't want to just show up with 20+ board games, but she has not returned my messages- might be on leave or something.

Michael Barnes wrote: Then the Grandparents went bananas. You would not believe the avalanche of JUNK they foisted on them. It's not even sweet or cute or endearing. It is literally just piles and piles of stuff they don't really want and definitely don't need. It wasn't a total bust because I made an Amazon list and so there were some quality gifts, but PLEASE GOD do not give my kids more crayons or another "activity set" of any kind. My parents practically raid the shelves of TJ Maxx and Costco for their presents and we just wind up secretly returning almost everything. It makes me feel bad, but we literally could not fit everything into the Highlander to take it home.

I feel you here. I don't have kid/grandparent issues but my in-laws have this bad habit of going off list, grabbing random things. It's... fine? Thought that counts and all. But if I don't want/need it better you donate to charity for me and I'd be much happier for it.

Fitbits are bad ass. They are awesome to tell you if you're having a heart attack, and also, they can help you realize you're sleeping shittily.

FENDER SQUIER .... WHATS? Strat? Telly? other?

Yesterday my refrigerator died. So I got to buy myself a new refrigerator. Yay for unexpected expenses!

They are Strats...I don't think they do a Tele in the 3/4 size. They're really cute guitars, very basic with three single pickups, classic styling, standard bridge. Pretty decent sound, overall good Fender quality. I miss my 1989 Strat and Princeton Chorus amp that got lost in a relationship years ago.

I was returning some track pants that didn't fit at Costco yesterday and got a look into the return bins. So many gifts headed back to the shelves. It was a survey of what people didn't want. Nobody wanted those big wireless weather stations, for example.

Michael Barnes wrote: For some reason, my parents gave both me and my wife Fitbits even though we have never expressed any interest in owning them. I don't know what to do with it. I don't need to be reminded to be healthy.

Damn, should have had them send them to us We got the Charge HR 2. I like seeing how many steps I take, heart rate, calories burned etc. It's a bit gamey, I like that. I have a chest strap heart rate monitor which are more accurate but uncomfortable and a pain to put on. Plus I want to lose wait ... now if I could just get motivated to track my calories.

Nothing gaming related for me, well I did buy Football Manager 17 with my birthday money, but other than that I gave my wife the Undead expansion to Marrying Mr. Darcy. Oh and we got the Walmart Yeti cup knock-offs. Works for me and 1/3 of the price!

Oh, those coupons are insanely awesome, Mark. Well worth keeping for years. How many of us can say the same about the presents we got?

Yeah, those coupons are amazing and really well done.

The only game stuff I got was the Trederra expansion for Shadows of Brimstone that my wife gave me. I actually physically bought it for 20% off at my FLGS' Black Friday sale at her behest because she wanted to support local retailers. I've almost got it put together with only five of the Mutant Trederrans left. My son has been helping; I started him out with the easy stuff like the tank traps, barrel & crate terrain and the grenadiers. He had a little trouble with the lieutenants, though, I had to realign one of the arms for him and he misaligned a backpack and broke off the teeny, tiny regulator on the air tank when he tried to pry it off and reglue it. He wanted to quit assembling at that point but I told him not to worry about it and keep going, so he finished the other two. Besides, a lot of the Trederrans have thing, fragile parts (gun straps, etc.), and half of my regular Trederran soldiers (there are six, three of each pose) had their right gas mask tubes break off.

Everything else she got for me was off the (short) list I gave her, save for the last thing I opened. She was going through her scrapbooking photos stockpile a month ago and came across several pictures of Zoey, our 17 year old cat who died in October. She made me a small, 8" x 8" scrapbook with the photos, almost all of which were taken the first year we owned her when we lived in our apartment in Milwaukee. I immediately teared up and had to set it aside after flipping through only a few pages, but it was a nice surprise and I have some other Zoey pictures I found that I'd like to add to it.

I have to share this because it is amazing and my mother in law won Christmas:

My wife played my mother in law's accordian (lots of Central European influence in Nebraska) when she was home getting tests done for the kidney donation---my wife loved it. So my mother in law went looking for one for xmas. Apparently they run like 700-800 dollars used... then she hit a Craiglist ad with no pictures, which is usually a bad sign. So she thought fuck it, let's see what's up anyway. Turns out to be a 75 year old man who doesn't know how to upload to cl, his mother just died and he found his old accordian. Only wants like 100 bucks for it as long as it goes to someone who plays it and it's in beautiful condition. They make the exchange in a gas station parking lot and this spry old dude starts playing it and draws a crowd. Check this out:

That is a mighty fine gift right there. Accordions are big bucks.

Gary Sax wrote: as a warning to norms.

ooh, let's not do this