Yesterday, we joined the ranks of Xbox 360 owners.  Even more exclusively, we are a proud owner of an Xbox 360 Elite console.  We received it as a joint birthday gift yesterday from my mother (Lindsey’s birthday is tomorrow, mine is in October).  As an added gift, Chris & Kelly purchased The Orange Box for Lindsey’s birthday.  To complete our day, we rounded up all of the games we no longer cared about and traded them in for a brand new second controller from GameStop!

We already had Halo 3, as I purchased the Legendary Edition last year, forseeing a time when I would have a 360.  We had Crackdown, but it was one of the games we traded in for the new controller.  We have Fable II, as it came with the Elite.

This puts our game list, so far, at:

Halo 3, Fable II, and The Orange Box (which includes Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal).

Once we had it set up, Lindsey started trying to find a new gamer tag.  After about half an hour of attempts, she finally found one she was happy with.  She went through her setup process, and relinquished the controls to me.  I spent about 5 minutes searching for a gamer tag before I found one that worked for me, then I finished my setup process.  Afterwards, we set up Netflix to stream movies to the 360, and got started!

It’s been a blast so far.  We’ve spent the whole day playing Halo 3, Portal, and various Live Arcade games and demos.  Our Xbox Live Gamertag pages are in our links section to the right of the page.  See you guys on Xbox Live!

-Because I said so

Lindsey’s birthday is tomorrow (Monday, June 29th), but I threw her birthday party yesterday (Saturday, June 27th).  The party was a surprise, and went off fairly well.  I took Lindsey out to run some errands, and left her copy of the house key under the mat for one of my friends.  They came by, let everyone in, put the cake in the freezer, and waited for our return, where they yelled “Surprise!”.  Unfortunately, only three people were ON TIME, so it was a rather disappointing yell, but it was a surprise nonetheless!  Lindsey’s reaction was, “How the hell did you guys get in my apartment!?”

We had pizza, an amazing cake from Cold Stone Creamery, and, eventually, some of our friends!  We ate the pizza.  We ate the cake.  Then we opened the presents.

I got her a Mario bobblehead and a Yoshi bobblehead to go with her Bowser bobblehead.

Chris and Kelly (leftybrown & mrsleftybrown) got Lindsey a game, The Orange Box, for the Xbox 360.  But wait!  We don’t own a 360!

Except for the one my mother got us for her birthday and mine (mine isn’t until October, so it’s an early gift).  Unfortunately, the Xbox 360 Elite only comes with one controller.  This is where Chris & Kelly really saved the day.  They suggested we head in to GameStop with some games we didn’t want, and do a trade-in.  We grabbed eight or nine games, and were on our way.  They offered to pick up the balance, but luckily, it wasn’t necessary!  Our trade-in value was over $53, which was just a dollar and change short of a brand new Xbox 360 Elite controller!

Back to playing now.  Bye bye.

-Because I said so