birthday present shopping with Maddy. This was hilarious.

So I say, "since I wasn't here at your birthday time, and you were out of town, we'll go shopping and you can pick out a birthday present for yourself. Do you want to go to FAO Schwartz?"
Maddy (age 8) says, "Can we go to Borders instead?"

We go to Borders, we're there a long time reading books...then she wants to go to FAO after all. So we go there. We play with every toy we can..but she doesn't want any of that. We head down to the Lego store, but end up at the Disney Store instead. We again played with everything, pushed every button they have on the wall (they have buttons on the wall, at roughly kid-height, which when pushed make disney characters talk around you. very cool.), some more than once. We saw the Britney video of "can't help falling in love with you" from Lilo and Stitch...and finally Maddy chose the Buzz Lightyear action figure. he talks, he "shoots lasers", his wings pop out...yeah. bonus for me: it was on sale! :-)

Happy Birthday Maddy. (it was a long time ago, over a month...but you know..I haven't seen her since the week BEFORE her birthday!)