just mailed M and N's gifts

The woman at the post office said they should take 6 weeks to get there. I just made the cutoff for a Dec 24 arrival. Perfect!

Again, the gifts cost more to mail than acquire and I am reminded of M's birthday in 2005 when I sent him a red tonka truck (the big one), red ball cap and red licorice. What I paid for both gifts today, going to two different continents was still less than what I paid for that one gift 4 years ago. That birthday gift was unbelievably expensive to mail but I felt like every child deserves a tonka truck. I remember how much my sibs and I loved ours. I put the licorice (with a toothbrush) and a red ball cap inside the dumpster portion and it was neat to see the entire red package sitting in its box. I just wish I had thought to take a picture then.

This is the first time I took a picture of the gifts as my sister wanted to see how the shirt turned out with N's name on it. I think I might take a picture every year so I don't end up duplicating gifts for the kids. I often send paper and markers (not this time though as M just received another batch for his birthday this past summer). By having a picture, the latest paper and markers could be different kinds since I would be able to reference the ones that I have sent before.

As for the gifts, it was E who picked up the gifts for N last weekend. N is the same age as E. So E picked out mostly "princess" stuff since that is what E is into these days. Since M is now 11 years old, I picked him up a morphobot toy, some jacks and puzzles, as well as a shirt. I always like to send the kids clothes at Christmas. One Christmas, I sent M glow in the dark Spiderman pj's and underwear. The World Vision folks took a picture of him holding them up and smiling ear to ear. Mostly the pics of the kids are routine photos where the kids have lined up to send a photo with their update, not a smiling photo though. This photo of him smiling has been my favourite so far. In another update photo a year later, he was wearing the Spiderman pj bottoms as pants. So cute.