Mother's Day

I had a lovely Mother's Day weekend. On Saturday, after I got up early with the kids, selenite took them over a couple hours later and let me go back to sleep for a bit. Ahhh. The whole family went out for a late lunch for me - figuring Sunday would be way too crowded, and Saturday midafternoon shouldn't be bad. Sadly, Mimi's, where I wanted to go, was VERY crowded. We ended up at Outback which was just opening. Still a nice meal. Afterwards we went over and played Rock Band for a while, which I hadn't done in way too long. Sunday they gave the mothers carnations at church, and we brought in two stuffed animals for Teddybear Sunday, when they collect stuffed animals and then donate them to a program for helping abused children. The big kids gave me cards they made in Sunday school. And later in the day selenite gave me an World of Warcraft in-game pet for Mother's Day - a cute bear cub.

Upcoming birthday girls

In a month we have two family birthdays coming up close together - Maggie's 7th and Alanna's 2nd.

I know there are going to be family members asking me what they would want, so I figured okay, I'll put a post up.

Maggie has become a little bookworm. It's amazing. She wants to read in bed every night, and spends a lot of her time with her nose deep in a book. The apple has not fallen far from the tree.

She's been particularly interested lately in the American Girl books. She has the the basic set of the Kirsten books, and she has the first book of the Kit series. She really wants more. I know she wants the rest of the Kit books, she's been asking for those. There are some ancillary Kirsten books she doesn't know about. Looking through the other series, I'd probably also pick Josefina (we gave those to a classmate for her birthday, so it'd be interesting for her too), Addy, and maybe Kaya. Heck, any of the historical characters would be interesting for her. She's just soaking it up*.

Sure, she'd be interested in the dolls, too, but I think the books are a higher priority. And less expensive. It seems the books are best priced on Amazon, but the dolls significantly better on the American Girls website, if anybody really wants to get her a dolls-and-books set - yeah, she'd probably go wild about that. I did put together a wishlist on Amazon for her for some of the books - it's here
http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/25HKV60Y4EXSK

Alanna is really enjoying Sesame Street, and particularly likes Big Bird. I'd love to get her more Sesame Street to watch. They have one season recorded on Miles' video box, and the Old School DVDs. I *wish* we could get more of the "old school" stuff - the kids AND the adults like that better than the newer stuff. But other Sesame Street videos could be nice for her. Please not Elmo stuff, that gets on the adults' nerves. She likes the musical stuff, too, likes to start singing with them. I made an Amazon list of some of what looked like she'd most enjoy it: http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/3N6BEY0A3NXJ6

I hope this is helpful for the relatives.

(*She was recently asking me about Fiddler on the Roof, was that a true story? I explained about how it wasn't exactly true, in that the people were made up, but it was about a place and time and people that were a lot like that. Like the Kirsten books. Then she wanted to watch it again, and was shushing Jamie and telling him how this was about history and she was really interested!)