Luke's Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Day O' Fun

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions about gifts for Luke's Christmas present! There were some really great ideas. Unfortunately, most were slighlty out of our meager budget. I finally ended up coming up with the idea of having a day in which Luke was able to choose, from a variety of options, what we did all day.

I planned a day in which there were several options for each meal, and for the morning, afternoon, and evening. Some were free activities and others were not, but if he chose an activity that was free over one that cost money, he was "rewarded" with a gift.

I gave Luke his meal options the day before, so that I could shop for anything I would need to make.

The morning began with me cooking French toast and bacon, which Luke stayed in bed and picked out his remote control helicopter, his reward for choosing not to eat out all day.

Next (still in our pajamas), Luke chose to play Risk, a game I generally refuse to play because of the length of time it takes to play, and my lack of skill at most strategy games. Needless to say, Luke won.

For lunch we enjoyed pizza subs, our homemade version of Potbelly's sandwiches. In the afternoon Luke had the option of going to the North Park Nature Center or the Lincoln Park Zoo, or seeing a movie out or at home. Since it was a snowy day and we decided we'd prefer to stay cozy inside, we rented Wall-E.
It was almost cute as everyone had told us it was. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it. Luke was able to pick out a second reward for choosing not to spend money on a movie: a 49ers hat something he'd been wanting for a long time.

After that we had time to play a game of Uno, where I was able to redeem myself from the earlier Risk game.
My evening options were admittedly slim, since it is hard to find a free or inexpensive nighttime activity in Chicago in the winter, so we ended up improvising a little bit and, at Luke's suggestion, went to Borders and spent some time reading over coffee.

When we got home, we enjoyed my pizza, made from scratch the day before. Looks tasty, no? We are still searching for a pizza rezipe that will live up to this miracle they call a pizza, so if you have a good pizza dough recipe, let us know!

So that was Luke's Day O' Fun. I think he really enjoyed it, and it was a lot of fun to have an entire day together to do nothing but relax and have fun.

Thanks again for all of your suggestions, they certainly inspired some creativity in me!