Christmas Presies for the Kiddies

This is one of the more difficult tasks for non-parent gift givers. Every birthday, every Christmas, I would wonder what I should get for the five nephews and niece. This year, Vanessa helped me out by posting a gift registry on Myregistry.com for Riley & Duncan. It is a great idea. There are a few downsides of the website. I cannot price compared. All I can do is to review the list, see where it is available and then use MySimon to decide on final vendor.

I thought about using this for myself. I even registered as a user. But then I couldn’t find most of the things I want to list on a registry. So, I stay with Kaboodle. I can use their add-in tool just to add about anything from any web page onto a consolidated list!!! Anyway, it is great to have a suggestion list on toy gifting...

For Riley, I got him the Learning Resources Teaching Cash Register. For Duncan, I got him the International Playthings iPlay Little Tuffies Trucks and the Busy Basics Busy Ball Choo-Choo Train.

For Caden and Makayla, I called Brenda up. She gave me couple ideas but Tom and I couldn’t find them at Toys ’r Us. We had a mission to find something before Christmas Eve. After a while, we settled on Planet Toys Planet Earth Digital Microscope Kit for Caden. And for Makayla, we want to get her some girly stuffs. That one is going to be a tomboy without intervention!!! We got her the Magic Tea Party and the Just Like Home Toaster Playset. Actually, after they opened the presents, Caden was playing with the toaster while Makayla focused on the food…

For Ian, it was a bit more challenging. Sandy wants to décor his room so anything with a car theme would be good. But by the time Christmas comes around, it was too late as the parents were still trying to decide on the furniture! So I did an online search for best toys of the year and found the Wild Planet Hyper Dash Game. It supposes to encourage lots of running around. Good to spend that boy’s abundance energy!!! Of course by now, it is already 3 days before Christmas. Through all my searches, there was only one in-stock at an online store. And they wanted to charge $$$ to mail this package. I tried to call around the stores locally. Toys ‘r Us does not carry it in store and it is out of stock online. I called the Torrance Target store and found the last one in stock. So Tom and I rushed in to get it in the mail. Now, I finally understand why parents can act so crazily over toys during Christmas shopping season!!! And why they normally start way way ahead than the week of Christmas...

At the end, all turns out great. At least I hope so. Hey, I figure we did our aunty and uncle duty. It is up to the parents to figure out what to do with the toys!!!