Have a Smurfy day! ... iPad style

On Dec 24, my husband I will celebrate our 6th anniversary (inshAllah). We usually exchange gifts for our anniversary, and we celebrated in style last year.

This year, my husband and I both had the idea to gift each other an iPad. Instead of dropping a ton of cash on getting two iPads, we made a deal to buy 1 and share it.  (Awww....how cute!)


My husband wanted to use it mostly for reading stuff (PDFs and books), so I bought him the ReaddleDocs for iPad app.

As for me, I've been going into the Apple store for months just so I can play Diner Dash on the demo models I thought I'd use it to play games and read books (even though I already have an older model Amazon Kindle which has been working fine, but iPad is in color...woooow).

A few days after we brought our iPad home, my husband told me he already thinks it's the greatest invention ever.

The past couple of weeks, I've been crazy busy at work (which is mostly the reason I haven't been blogging much lately).  After working 12+ hours days, the only thing I want to do is veg.  One evening while browsing the apps available for iPad, I stumbled across Smurfs' Village.  If you haven't seen it or played it yet, there's a demo video of it on YouTube.  As a kid, I remember watching Smurfs cartoons, and the characters in the game look just like I remember them.

Many of my Facebook friends became addicted to FarmVille...but not me.  For months, I watched them harvest their crops and tend to their animals.  I ignored all of their requests for me to help them grow their crops or to find a missing egg.

So...it's with great embarrassment that I have to admit I downloaded the Smurfs' Village app ("it's free...so why not?" I thought). It started off easy (and without much commitment) in level 1. All I had to do was plant some crops (which only took 5 minutes to grow), build some Smurf houses, mix some potions for Papa Smurf, and...well, you get the idea.  Now I've got 30 Smurfs working for me...I've created an empire!

I want to stop playing the game...believe me, I do (if for no other reason than so my husband will stop poking fun of me).  The problem is that there's always something that needs to be taken care of -- sometimes Gargamel is creating problems, sometimes a bridge needs to be built...it never ends!

To be honest, I don't even know why I'm playing it.  Every time I pick up the iPad and "tend to my crops," I tell myself (and my husband too!) that I'm quitting the game.  That is, until my crops are ready to be harvested again.

The sad part is, several nights I had to work late and the iPad was at home when my crops were ready to be harvested.  As I'm sure anyone who plays FarmVille knows, if you don't harvest them right away...they wither and die.  So...it's with even more embarrassment that I admit I even had to ask my husband to harvest the Smurfs' crops. (Now that's love!)

For those readers out there who have iPads, this game is highly addictive (especially after you learn that you can "cheat" the game by shifting time on your iPad) and a colossal waste of time. I swear I'm quitting it...right after I harvest my crops.  ;)