It's a Very Bearded Christmas

This year went FAST. And my nephews are growing up WAY too fast. It pains me. Thank God I'm not growing up so quickly!

In November I started hounding my sister for "the list" from my nephews so I could start the shopping. I long for the days when we bought just fun toys that took up lots of room, made lots of noise and were all sorts of colors. And well, I could play with them. Now it's all about the video games and I find myself wandering around the video department clutching a list and looking as lost as every other grown-up there. We all take turns with the poor kid who works there: "What's the difference between a PS2, a PS3 and this PSP thing?" - "What do you do with this?" - "What ELSE do I need to buy to make this work?" - "Do you have anything that doesn't involve mass murdering?"

Anyway, so I got my list this year and it was the usual list of games for various systems that I know I'm going to need help finding. But then I got to William's list and it filled me with pure delight. He wanted some spy gear (which I discovered was actually Spy Gear™), some Ben 10 Alien Force stuff, a Nerf Gun (yea! simple! that can't be hard, right??); a Spartan costume and a fake beard. Yes, a fake beard. How random is that??

The Nerf gun was NOT easy - I bought 3 before I found the "right" one in stock. I went to two toys stores, 3 Targets and TWO Game Stops before I finished finding all their loot. (And now I have a car full of post-holiday returns to make). But the most fun was my trip to the Mardi Gras costume shop for the fake beard. I bought two one for William and one for his younger brother in case they want to form a bearded gang or something.

I'm happy to say that every time I heard him on the phone - the beard was in his top 3 favorite gifts. Yea! Still some fun in the holiday. And NO, the boys didn't let me break any of their video games.