My kids don’t know how good they have it. A few years back, I was contacted by Nintendo about being an “Influencer” or “Ambassador” for the brand. What does that entail? Playing video games! I love the organic feel of this unpaid campaign and the kids love it even more. Sure, we occasionally get sent new games (Hadley is gonna freak when she gets Animal Crossing for Christmas!) but it’s all about grassroots marketing and authentic experiences, which is easy to do because Bode looks forward to his bi-weekly WiiU times.
Side note: he’s been workin’ it with his grandmas on getting new games (thanks to Jamie’s mom for getting him Super Mario 3D Land). My parents almost bought him the same thing but I steered them in the direction of getting the kids much-needed carry-ons. I wonder what they’ll be more excited about. 
Last weekend, our Nintendo peeps descended upon our snowy, single-digit landscape to invite us to a Mario Party Island Tour! When we arrived at the venue, a beautiful historic mansion, it had been transformed into a plastic tropical paradise with beach balls, bean bags, palm trees and leis. Each person signed out a DS unit for us to play this new game and it was the most anti-social, social event around. 
I don’t claim to be a Mario expert but what I thought was cool was you can connect up to four players if you have wireless so we battled it out on the 7 new game boards and 80 new minigames as we wrangled goombas (huh?!) and blasted out of cannons.
And yes, Bode beat us in practically every game.
We had a blast playing with old friends and meeting new ones.
Blogging queens Gretchen, moi, Melissa, Justine and Aimee (taken with her phone)
Dangerous palm trees
You know you’ve been to a killer party when you not only play a fun game like Mario Party Island Tour but the decorations become weapons and the furniture (beanbags) = party favors! Thanks to Nintendo for the warm blast of fun!
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 