This is part of our 100 Things in 2014 challenge. Here’s the full list.

We love our neighborhood. This year the businesses on Alberta Street banded together to make Gnome for the Holidays, which is kind of like bingo plus hide-and-seek. We walked Alberta from Grand all the way to 33rd and back, checking all the participating shop windows for hiding gnomes.

Becky and I went along with them, but the finding of the gnomes and the gathering of stickers was up to the kids. They were responsible for going inside the business, being polite and courteous to all the customers and employees, and taking turns with collecting the stickers for the scorecard from the shopkeepers, all without any help from us. Also, this being Portland and all, we found a few other remarkable things along the way.

Here’s a sample game card. We found all but one!

The kids were super proud. They finished around 4 miles of urban hiking that day, spotted around 50 gnomes (one of the shops had an entire window display, complete with a gnome Christmas tree), and had some pretty great burgers for lunch.