wishing

Two weeks or so ago I asked the kids for their Christmas wish lists.  I'm not sure why exactly, as most Christmas shopping was done this summer.  But there is just something about writing out your wish list and getting all excited thinking about Christmas morning.  Only Lucy and Mia took me up on it, however.

Lucy:  make up (oh, joy), barbies, barbie house, pretend crown, books jewelry, pretend glasses, littlest pet (shop.... she ran out of room for that word)

Mia:  books, (then she wrote stuffed animals but scribbled that out and wrote no.... smart girl.  She realizes that she has accumulated plenty in the short time we've lived here.), pet shops, candy, fabric, ribbon (girl after my own heart), set of gel pens or good markers.  She later added to her list on the computer: canvases, paint, a Kindle, and money

Cade and Maddy ended up writing something up on the computer as well...

Cade: a fish (a held-over request from last year), lego, and an ipod

Maddy: cell phone, kindle books, money, candy.... the cell phone has been the thing on her mind for a long time and it has been the thing in the conversation for just as long.  I hope she won't be disappointed Christmas day.....

Then all of the kids wrote "Puppy!!!!!!!" on their list.  And they wrote puppy on my list as well!  I would like a puppy, but I sure don't want the work, so I'm a little in the middle on that one!

I will say that the whole Christmas list making is not nearly as fun as it used to be.  I think our kids today get ripped off.  They don't get the Sear Christmas catalogue. 

Life was way better when we had the Sears Christmas catalogue.  I remember getting super excited whenever it arrived in the mail.  Now that was a good day.  I got more excited than Steve Martin when the new phone books arrived.  And the Sears catalogue had a long run.  We've been reading "The Great Brain" books to Cade lately (fabulous books!) and they talk about it there - the books are set back in 1900 or so.

I wish my kids could sit around looking at the catalogue.  Its so fun, and it doesn't even feel greedy for some reason.  I've got so many great memories over it.  All of us kids marking in a different color or with our first initial the things that we wanted.  Good times.

Some of the best times were at Carolyn's house - and it didn't even have to be the Christmas edition....  Carolyn and I would have a sleepover on her hide-a-bed in the living room.  They had vellux blankets that were really soft - I always thought they must have been pretty rich because only nice hotels had those kind of blankets.  Now-a-days you only find vellux blankets at Motel 6 with cigarette holes burned in them.  I can just hear their dog Cinders barking at something and snuffling around while we sat on the bed and looked at the catalogue.  We would go through the entire - the entire - catalogue, and pick out our most and least favorite thing on each page.  Each page.  Oh, I lied.  We skipped the men's underwear section because that was gross.  But every other page, regardless of what it was - even boy's socks.  Now those - they were great times.

So what I do want?  Maybe this picture will help out.

I want our bed off the floor.  I'm tired of camping..... comfortable camping, but camping nonetheless.  Eric thinks it is great still being on the floor as he can sprawl out his limbs and rest them on the ground if need be.  Not me.  I don't need the extra space and I do want to make the room nice and pretty for a change.  And I don't want to camp anymore.

The rest of my wish list is all rather pricey.  What happened to my inexpensive taste?  I want a Kindle Touch, "Silhouette" craft cutter, a dishwasher and a VW bug so I have a small car to drive around in.  Oh, and apparently I want a puppy.

And what does Eric want?  That's a great question.