My family game night is sponsored by Wii U. How U will play next! Click here for a chance to win a Wii U™ Deluxe Set and $5,000 to take your family on vacation!
By Gabrielle.

This is my last Wii U post. It’s just a little encouragement to enter the Family Game Night Sweepstakes. You could win an awesome Wii U Deluxe — plus $5000 for a family vacation. Sounds good to me! And I would be over the moon if a Design Mom Reader was the winner.

You can find all the details here, but for a quick summary, to enter the contest, you’ll create a Pinterest pinboard named “Family Game Night.” Then pin pictures from your own game night or even inspirational photos for the game night you’d love to host.

Time’s running out! Enter by December 22nd. I hope you win!

 P.S. — I know these photos from our Wii U party are blurry, but I love the energy! See all 4 posts about our game night here.

My family game night is sponsored by Wii U. How U will play next! Click here for a chance to win a Wii U™ Deluxe Set and $5,000 to take your family on vacation!
By Gabrielle.

As promised, I have lots of Wii U party photos to share. But I’m just going to tell you first thing: When I saw the ads, I thought the Wii U looked cool, but I wasn’t sure it would be much different than the Wii. But friends, we LOVE it. It’s perfect for groups and families! And it’s perfect for a busy house.

During the party we played NintendoLand — which is the launch game for the Wii U. So of course, it really takes advantage of what the Wii U can do. NintendoLand comes with 3 types of games. There are Team Up games, where everyone works together. There are Battle It Out games, where one person uses the Gamepad Controller and plays against up to 4 more players who share the TV screen. There are also Solo Games, if you’re playing on your own.

During our party, the Battle it Out games definitely got the biggest reaction. Olive might be on the Gamepad Controller, while Ralph, Maude, Betty & Oscar played with traditional controllers. Or Ben Blair might take the Gamepad Controller and do a grownups against the kids round. It made for lots of happy shouting, excitement and laughs!

The next day, when the kids were playing more casually, they said they preferred the Team It Up games because everyone worked together and no one felt bad at the end. I thought that was sweet. : )

The other thing we really appreciate about the Wii U, is that the Gamepad Controller can be played on it’s own. So if Olive is playing Wii U, and someone else needs the TV, Olive can keep playing on the Gamepad Controller. The flexibility is really nice.

The Wii U is already well-loved at our house. Maude is having friends over tomorrow to study — but mostly to play Wii U. It’s definitely a hit with the Blairs!

And without further ado, here are the 8 t-shirts we ended up making:

Thank you again, for all the help coming up with ideas. High five for Family Game Night!

P.S. — Here are earlier posts about making the Wii U tshirts and setting up the console.

My family game night is sponsored by Wii U. How U will play next! Click here for a chance to win a Wii U™ Deluxe Set and $5,000 to take your family on vacation!
By Gabrielle.

You know that little head cold I mentioned on Friday? Well, by Saturday morning it had turned into full-blown can-barely-make-it-off-the-couch sickness. And I was pretty much a lump all weekend.

But the Wii U arrived on Saturday afternoon, and the kids were soooo excited, that of course, I wouldn’t have dreamed of putting off the party. We ended up spending Saturday evening setting up, and scheduled the party for Sunday afternoon. (FYI: I’m feeling much, much better now!)

Here’s the story with set up. We did a little tag-teaming. Ben Blair and Ralph went to the grocery store to pick out party treats — in Wii U white of course. (Of course!) Grocery stores in our village close at 7:30, and they don’t open on Sundays, so this errand was pretty much had-to-be-done-right-then.

While they were at the store, I sat huddled on the sofa with a blanket, and watched 13-year-old Maude set up the console like she was some kind of gaming pro. Olive, Oscar and Betty loaded the hand controllers with batteries and put them in their protective coverings.

June helped out by being 2 years old and irresistibly cute.

Part of the setup included updating the software of the Wii U unit. Since we live in a farmhouse in the middle of the countryside our internet connection isn’t what you would call “strong”, so this took us a good hour+, but we used the downtime to prep and eat dinner, so nobody minded.

Once the set-up was complete, we had 3 games to pick from: Batman, Scribblenauts, and NintendoLand. But we asked the kids to save the games for our big Wii U party, so instead of gaming, they spent Saturday night making Miis.

I’m just going to tell you right now, making Miis is my kids’ favorite part of the Wii U (it was their favorite part of the Wii as well). By the end of Saturday night, we had Miis for all 8 members of the family, plus all the Harry Potter characters.

If Miis are new to you, they’re basically a character that you create, and then you can choose that character to play in Wii U games on your behalf. You can control the hairstyle, hair color, shape of the eyes and mouth, clothing color. Pretty much everything.

I assume you can play the Wii U without making Miis, but for my kids, I knew Miis would be their first priority, and would definitely count as part of setting up. So saving the party for day 2, actually worked out really well. : )

If you’re a Wii U family, I’d love to know: Do your kids spend more time on games or on making Miis?

P.S. — I’ve got loads of great party photos to share next week. Plus, we totally used two of your t-shirt suggestions! Thank you so much for all the help. I’ll show you which ones we ended up using in the next post. Here’s a sneak peek of the party:

My family game night is sponsored by Wii U. How U will play next! Click here for a chance to win a Wii U™ Deluxe Set and $5,000 to take your family on vacation!
By Gabrielle.

We have been gaming console-less since we moved to France. I didn’t think we’d miss it for a year and left it in storage. But one year has turned into 2 years+, and I confess, we’ve sighed over our lack of Wii on more than one occasion. It’s not even that we’re huge gamers, it’s just that winter is really long and cold here, and those active games are so reliable to keep us moving on dreary days. (They’re such a draw for playdates too!) Anyway, Nintendo reached out about Wii U, their hot new system, and I was all: Sign me up!

Have you seen the Wii U? It looks ideal for groups and families. You can have up to 4 players splitting the TV screen and working together, and a fifth player using the screen on the new Gamepad Controller and acting as opposition. Which is awesome! And pretty much a perfect fit for our 5 oldest (because our #6 is too little anyway : ).

The launch game for the Wii U is called Nintendo Land — it’s a theme park where all the different “lands” are based on popular Nintendo worlds. Think Donkey Kong, Mario, and Zelda. Again, perfect for our crew — familiar, family-friendly games.

The console is supposed to arrive this week, and the kids are pretty psyched, so we decided to make t-shirts for our opening night competition. (Mostly, we always like a good excuse to come up with t-shirt slogans.) We used the little blue rounded “U” box from the logo for the background, and spent a dinnertime coming up with t-shirt options. Here’s what we have so far:

Wii Madame
Wii Monsieur
It’s on like Donkey Kong
Wii are the World
Team Mario
Team Luigi

If you want in on the t-shirts, you’re in luck. I’ve got downloads ready for you in two sizes, for grownups and little people. Just print out in reverse on iron-on paper. Then cut out and place it on the t-shirt. Turn it over for ironing. And voila! You’re good to go.

But first, I’d love your help. We came up with 6 designs, but we want 2 more, so that each family member has their own. Will you help us out? What should our other two t-shirts say?

P.S. — Huge sweepstakes from FM + Nintendo! Pin your own Family Game Night photos and you can win a Wii U Deluxe set plus $5000 for a family vacation. Fantastic! Find details and the entry form here.