Elephant Pumpkins and Doll Discrimination, It's All Here!

There are some weeks that go by and I am so busy but at the end of it there is nothing tangible to show for all the work.

But, not this week, folks!  This week I have this:

 

Yes, I helped my 7 year old turn a pumpkin into an elephant for his school project where they were to decorate a pumpkin to look like a book character.  He chose Horton from Horton Hatches the Egg as his character. Let it be known that I typically do not assist quite so much with my children's school projects, but seriously, for this one?  What 7 year old can turn a pumpkin into a book character by themselves??  And my little guy and I did have fun doing this project together.

Grab a glue gun, some grey spray paint, an old grey sock stuffed with stuffing and a wire coat hangar, some construction paper ears, googly eyes, and a felt cut out mouth and you too could have a pumpkin elephant!  What better thing to add to your Halloween decor?!!

This is another item I've added to my arsenal of Mommy-skills, the ability to turn a pumpkin into an elephant!  Cinderella's fairy godmother's got nothing on me!

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We have every other year friend birthday parties for our kids and on the off years they can choose a special activity with a parent or our family, like attending a professional sports event, visiting an amusement park, or the hotel overnight I recently did with my older daughter.  To celebrate Little Girl's birthday this past week, I took her and my 9 year old daughter to the American Girl store.  

We had lunch with their dolls, the dolls are given their own seat and dishes!  

Then we had the dolls hair done, which Little Girl's doll REALLY needed as she had done her own "styles" on her poor doll and it was looking really ratted and messy.  For a bargain $10 (and hear me on this, NOTHING else is a bargain at that store, but getting her old doll's hair fixed back to nice for only $10 was a steal!) Daisy the doll even got to sit in a salon chair with a cape and get her hair styled.  Little Girl loved watching her doll's hair get fixed.  (The look on the stylist's face is hilarious, the doll's hair really was that bad!)

But, that sweet lady was able to work wonders and Daisy the doll is back to cute curly pigtails!

We had such a fun afternoon, I really should have just ended it there, but I'd told Little Girl that as part of her birthday gift from us she could pick out a new doll from the store.  Oh sweet mercy, I cannot tell you how many times my older daughter and I walked around that store with Little Girl looking at all the choices!  Little Girl would enthusiastically fall in love with a doll, settle on it, only to change her mind to a different doll one display over!  Then she'd pick a doll because she liked the outfit it was dressed in and we had a time explaining that the doll was not dressed in the outfit she came in, so she should not pick the doll based on the dress the doll was wearing, that dress was sold separately for $40!!

And don't even get me started on the little episode where my 9 year old daughter tried to convince her little sister to get "Addie", the doll with "brown skin, like yours".  We broke down all kinds of cultural and racial barriers right there in the American Girl store and Little Girl left with a fair skinned, blonde-haired doll, proving to the world that you don't have to look like your doll to love her!

Here she is with her old and new dolls:

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Happy Friday, Friends!!