The week before Christmas, Anna kept telling me that she had one last thing to get for me. I was sincerely clueless as to what it might be. 10 days before Christmas, I got my last pre-holiday paycheck. Anna happened to take the afternoon off, so I assumed it was to get said last gift.

When I got home that evening, I jokingly asked her what she got for me. Andrew very proudly piped up, "Xbox 360!" Jacob and Anna both tried to shut him up. The look on Anna's face was terrible. At that moment, I think she truly had hatred for poor little Drew.

Over the next week, I managed to convince myself that it wasn't an actually Xbox 360 system, but accessories for it instead, that Anna would get that for me later. After all, Halo 3 was my primary interest and that's not coming out likely until November or so.

Christmas morning finally arrives. We go through and open all of the gifts. I get a wireless controller for the 360 and the Play & Charge kit. I figure we're done. At the very least, she's resigned herself to the fact that I'm getting one eventually. So, I start helping my kids put together this marble works thing we got for them. Shortly after I get started, we get a phone call from my mom letting us know that she's on her way, which is about a 45 minute drive for her. My wife tells me that she's going to go ahead and hop in the shower, so she heads on upstairs to get clothes ... or so I though.

She comes back downstairs and walks into the living room with a large, heavy box and says, "Oh, gee, I forgot one." I knew right then what it was, even though this box is much too large to just be the 360. There's also a much smaller gift on top that I initially go for, but she snatches that away from me. I open the large box only to find a lot of plastic bags surrounding a smaller box, which was the right size. I open that up and, sure enough, there's my very own Xbox 360. The smaller gift turned out to be the hotrod faceplate, which she bought solely because she liked the way it looked. She didn't want me to open that first because it would be "a dead giveaway."

She told me later that she had planned on waiting all day, until late that evening before giving it to me, just to let me sweat it out. I'm happy I got it at all, honestly. Kudos to her for pulling it off!

That was 7 weeks ago. Thanks to some other perks of my job, I've since gotten "Gears of War" and a couple other Xbox Live Arcade games, including UNO. My heart still lies with the Halo franchise, however.

Bungie recently announced the Rule of Three program, which I figured was my best shot of getting into the Halo 3 beta testing since it was free. The rules were that you had to play 3 hours of Halo 2 using an Xbox 360 over Xbox Live during a three day period. At a later date, you could register to get in the Halo 3 beta testing. If you were one of the first 13,333 to do this and meet the requirements, you'd get an invite. Well, late last night, I got my invite:

Congratulations Grumpy Jedi,

You were one of the first 13,333 gamers to meet the "Rule of Three" program eligibility requirements. As a result, you have been selected to participate in the Halo® 3 beta.

In order to participate, you must have access to:

• An Xbox 360™ Pro console or Xbox 360 Core console with hard drive
• A valid Xbox Live® Gold subscription

Keep an eye on your inbox, we will be sending more information about this opportunity soon.