Gift ideas for ages 2-13 years

I wasn't going to write a post about Christmas gifts this year because I feel like no one got anything unexpected. I mean, don't misunderstand: it was a great Christmas. But sometimes I feel like I've found things that are kind of strange and tailored to my children's strange interests, and a post on them is helpful because one might not run across those things elsewhere. This year, the things I thought each child would like were basically the types of things any child their age would like, and in fact were the types of thing to appear on "hot gifts for 2015" lists and so forth.

However! Sebastian has been asking and asking me when I'm going to post about the Christmas presents, so I suppose if only for memory's sake, here we go. (Previous years' gift ideas are here, here, and here.)

We basically give one present per child, plus a few small necessities like socks or hair bands. Abe got the little robot BB-8 from Star Wars. He (BB-8) is really cute and fun and easy to control, and everyone likes him, including Nutmeg. Abe uses Sam's old phone as a controller. 

Sebastian got this quadcopter drone. There were so many choices and I know so little about drones that I thought I'd never figure out which one to get! But we've been really happy with this one. I looked for one that could be flown easily by beginners, and that could be flown indoors! We don't have tons of huge open spaces in our house, and I didn't want something that was always running into walls and breaking something, or breaking itself! But I also knew Seb would have to practice with it in the house before venturing out into a park or something where he might fly it onto a roof and lose it. This drone seems great on both counts. It's very sturdy and it has the propeller guards around it, so it won't hurt things when it crashes. It has a "headless mode" for flying, which I don't totally understand—something about it flying the way you are facing, rather than toward its usual "front"—but which is nice to have, Sebby assures me. And it's not so powerful that it's going to hurt anyone (and the propellers are plastic). Sebastian has gotten really good at flying it, faster than I thought he would. He can maneuver into all sorts of places! Sometimes we go over to the church and Seb flies it around the cultural hall while I practice the organ. Fun for all. :) I know this is going to be even more fun when the weather gets nice again and he can do more with it outside!

The other thing that's fun about this drone is that it has a video camera on it. It's pretty basic, I think, which is what I wanted (no use having some expensive camera that will just get lost or broken!) but it's really fun for Seb to get video of things from above. Again, I imagine this will be even more fun when he can do it outside.

The batteries run out really fast (as they do on most drones, apparently) so we got some extra so he can have more flying time at once, and so there can always be some charging. Extra batteries and propellers for this drone are here and here.

And here is a short video of Seb flying the drone.

[While we're on the subject of Christmas presents, Sam got me this arc lamp for our room and I love it.]

It's strange how much deliberation Daisy's present caused me. I think it's because I never really played with dolls as a little girl, so I had some sort of residual feeling that they were "dumb" (or at least not as good as stuffed animals). As I say, strange, because we do have other little baby dolls and we've liked them, and I have always loved looking at the American Girl Doll catalogs and exclaiming over all the darling clothes and tiny little accessories. But somehow it had never translated into me thinking one of my girls would actually like to have a doll. Anyway, this year I was thinking about how much Daisy loves matching things and tiny things, and it occurred to me that she would LOVE to have a little doll that she could dress up to match herself. So I started looking at dolls.

And of course, like anything, once you start getting into it, you realize that there are TONS of options, and TONS of opinions, and people who know way more about this than you ever even knew existed, and it gets a bit overwhelming. The number of blogs and websites devoted to American Girl stuff alone is kind of boggling. And I didn't want to start a huge collection or spend a ton of money, so I just wanted to pick any old thing and call it good, but I found (to my chagrin) that I DID start to have opinions about which dolls were cuter. And the cheapest kind (the Target ones)—I just didn't like! Unfortunately. I felt like I would be alarmed to see their faces staring at me from out of the darkness.

Without getting into all the boring details about rooted hair vs. wigged hair and so forth, suffice it to say that I finally, after way more research than I ever intended to do, decided that one of these Gotz dolls would be best for Daisy (and I think they have the sweetest, cutest faces too!). They are 18" tall, the same size as the American Girl dolls, and in fact use the same exact body AG used in the early years, I think. So they can wear all the same clothes and use the same accessories as AG. The trouble is, they're European-made, so you have to order them from a site like this one. (Pottery Barn Kids also has a line of Gotz dolls—but they're expensive!) OR—you can watch eBay. And used ones show up there quite often! And for really good prices! Like this and this and this. It was fun to wait and watch for a good one, like a treasure hunt! I learned that you can make a Gotz doll's hair nice and silky again by washing it with a little baby shampoo—or, if it seems really dry and damaged, by soaking it in fabric softener like this. Magic Eraser can get little marks off of the doll's limbs, and then she can look just as good as new! I was so happy about that.

Daisy LOVES her doll. She named her Rosie. She LOVES dressing her up and matching her, just as I knew she would. So even though getting a little girl a doll for Christmas is just about the most obvious present ever, I felt so pleased with myself for thinking of it and finding such a cute doll! :) It was super fun to shop for some doll clothes, too. Ebay and Etsy have SO MANY cute things. It's this whole world I never knew about!

Junie likes everything Daisy likes, but I wasn't sure she'd be ready to take care of a doll with hair yet, so I found her this Gotz baby doll, also on eBay for $10. (Like this one.) I think these baby dolls are so cute! They are 15", the same size as the American Girl Bitty Baby dolls, so you can find lots of clothes for them on eBay too.

Junie named her doll Violet, and she loves her.

AND! I didn't know I would love crocheting for dolls so much. Little tiny dresses and hats go so fast, and are so fun to make! You can see the hats I made for the girls and their dolls here.

And then little Goldie couldn't be left out, of course! I got her a tiny 12" baby doll, this kind. She is adorable. Her name is Fern. (Yes, all of these dolls have names I would happily give daughters. Rosie and Violet were natural choices for the older girls' dolls because whenever they used to play that they were babies, I would call them Baby Rosie and Baby Violet. And when I asked Goldie what her doll's name was, she said something that sounded like "FUN", which I interpreted as Fern whether it was or not because that name is adorable!)

What did little baby Teddy get, you ask? Nothing, that's what. Well, a couple little stuffed toys. He did play with the wrapping paper quite a bit, though! :)

And that was our Christmas this year!

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Gift ideas, ages 18 months–12 years

I have become accustomed to posting about our kids' Christmas presents after Christmas. It may not be as helpful to anyone else (although, when you can save stuff to your Amazon wish lists anytime, why not?) but I like it. So, if your kids are anything like my own funny little goblins, here are some ideas for you.

For three-year-old Junie, we got this little orange chair (except it was half price at the time…not sure I would pay $50 for it). She likes orange and she always wants to sit by us while we're having school, but there's no more room on the couch, so I thought she'd like having her own little portable seat. And she does like it, but I think Marigold (18-months) likes it even more. Maybe Goldie finds it more of a novelty to have a chair her very own size? Anyway, I kind of wish I'd gotten one for her too. There is much scrambling and scrabbling for position between them when Junie goes to sit down. I suppose Goldie will get the chair in a year or so, when Junie grows out of it, anyway.

Junie loves pigs, so she also got this little Pocket Piggies book, which is adorable. The pigs are teeny-tiny!

Goldie is still The Baby Who Has Everything, so she didn't get much. But she did get this little blue elephant, which is so soft and cute. She likes it the same way she likes everything soft and huggable—I don't know that she's gotten specially attached to it yet, though. But we always love the Jellycat animals. This one is one of our favorite stuffed bunnies ever.

Oh, twelve-year-olds! They are so awesome. And yet not easy to shop for. Luckily Abe likes puzzles of all kinds, and that's pretty much what he got from everybody this year. We signed him up for a four-session skiing thing with some of his friends in January, so that was his main present. But he also got this strange curvy puzzle cube to add to his collection. Of course he spent all day watching tutorials on how to solve it, although I said, "Wouldn't you like to NOT know how to solve it for awhile?" Nope. :) I also have it on Abe's authority that this cube is a good one to get for someone who has mastered the basic Rubik's Cubes and wants something more challenging.

Abe also got a book on HTML, which he is having fun working through and making a website. I suppose he is doing that with online software somehow? but I know nothing about the details. It didn't seem hard for Sam and him to set it up, though.

Malachi is amassing quite a collection of these Audubon birds from his Grandma (he got a couple more this year) and he loves them. They are really soft and they give authentic bird calls. I wanted to get a little nest for them like this one I saw a couple years ago, but it's apparently discontinued or something; I couldn't find one anywhere. So I used some faux fur to make one. I didn't know what I was doing. It's basically a circle of fur and a circle of felt sewed together with a circle of cardboard between them for stability. Then a little ridge of fur sewed around the edge. Anyway, the birds look cute in it.

Like every kid, Ky loves Legos, but what he really loves are the little Lego guys. He'll usually build a set of Legos and then just want to walk the little men around and have them do things. And there are never enough little men! (Minifigures. I think that's what they really call them.) So I knew he would love this set of ALL Lego people. They are SO cute! With all their little tiny accessories! Malachi loves them SO much.

In searching for another book, I found this one about the elements, which I got for Sam, but we ALL love it. It is fascinating! It has pictures and information about each element on the periodic table, and it's just amazing to read about what kinds of things we can use each element for. Especially the lesser-known ones! And it's written in a very readable, approachable style. Now that we've read it we want to buy this book on molecules also.

If you have a boy like my Seb, he will probably love this book called Cool Stuff and How it Works. Because it's from 2005 (10 years ago? What?!) and it's about technology, I was afraid it might be out of date, but it isn't. It shows stuff Seb loves, like cameras and jet engines, but also stuff that he said "I hadn't even wondered about yet!", like electronic tennis rackets and bionic limbs and voice recognition systems. 

A while ago Seb saved up and bought a used digital camera, which he loved SO much, but it was really old and stopped working about a month and a half later. He even tried buying a new battery for it, but we couldn't get it working again. He was a little bit sad, but then he decided it would be more fun to take it apart anyway, and thus had been well worth his $20. :) Since then, he's been saving up for a new one, but since a new one will cost a lot more than $20, he had resigned himself to waiting for a long time. We were quite impressed with his persistence (and with how carefully he had treated his other camera)! So, when we saw this one in his favorite color for $60 on Amazon (!) we decided just to get it for him. It is TINY! Smaller than his hand. And he loves it. I haven't looked at the picture quality that much, but since for him it's way more about fiddling with the settings, making videos, and figuring out how every part works, it doesn't really matter. 

Daisy loves her tiny Book of Mormon so much that as soon as I saw they had made all the standard works available in Pocket-Size versions, I knew we had to get them for her. They are tiny and adorable. Also, unlike her previous one, they have all the pictures in them! Hooray!

Daisy also got this penguin game, which is fun, and (the biggest selling point): she and Junie or she and Malachi can play it all by themselves! I love that. It's sort of like memory game? You peek under the penguins to find the different colored eggs. Really simple and cute.

One more thing the kids got that has been surprisingly well-received is these little babies. I love these little soft pocket-size dolls and I'd been thinking of ordering a few of them. The artist gave me a great deal for getting a bunch at once, so I asked her to send one in everyone's favorite color. I thought they were too babyish for the older kids but I just gave them anyway, and everyone seems to like how they all go together, or something. It has been pretty cute to watch Abe and Seb and Ky playing Babies with the little girls. They'll have the babies all lined up and make dinner for them, or they'll pretend they're Magic Babies and fly them around like airplanes, or they'll swaddle them up individually in tiny blankets and carry them around in their pockets. So sweet!

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Steam Train to Garibaldi

I was excited to see there was a steam train that ran through Rockaway Beach, because the kids have always wanted to see a working steam locomotive! I wanted them to ride it so much that I specifically made sure we were staying through a weekend because the train only runs on Saturdays and Sundays (this time of year, anyway). It's a pretty short train ride, it just goes down the coast for a few miles and then back up, about an hour and a half total. But it's beautiful and even if it hadn't been, we were riding a train! Automatic fun.

We made sure to get there early so we could look the train over and see all the pistons and cylinders up close. We heard the train whistle from our cottage as the train came by, and I've never seen the kids get their shoes on and ready to go so fast! They were so excited.

The fireman was so nice! He saw how interested all the kids were in the train, and let them come up into the cab and look around at all the valves and pipes. We could feel the heat, and see the fire glowing yellow in the firebox! This steam locomotive runs on oil, the man told us.

Junie got all sooty in the cab, which seemed right somehow.

We walked through the indoor car, but decided we'd rather sit outside in the roofless car. It was cloudy and kind of misty, but not cold.

When the train started up, it was so loud and exciting! Whooshing and hissing and clouds of steam everywhere.

Such pretty scenery along the coast! I could never get tired of it.

At Garibaldi you can get off and look around at some of the other old trains. There's a little playground to play on, and boats in a harbor.

These little ones were always picking daisies and buttercups, everywhere we went!

Daisy was very impressed by the conductor and asked me to take her picture with him.

Marigold enjoyed the ride SO much! Lots of cars and people waved at the train as it went by, and Goldie just waved and waved back at them grandly, like she was royalty.

Every time the steam whistle blew, she laughed and laughed and laughed, and she loved the wind blowing through her hair (fuzz). She seemed to think everything had been arranged specifically for her personal enjoyment. It was so cute!

We just loved watching the steam drift up over the beautiful green forests. Oregon is such a great place!

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Good food near Tillamook and Rockaway Beach

Sam and I went to Portland (without kids) several years ago, and while in the area we drove out to Tillamook to see the cheese factory and get ice cream. The ice cream was so spectacular that we've talked about it ever since, so of course we were excited to come back with the kids. We had the opportunity to taste a lot more flavors this time (16, in fact, since we visited the ice cream shop on two different days) and they were, without exception, totally delicious.

Everywhere we went, there were huge swaths of wild daisies and buttercups growing along the roadsides. They were so pretty, and I always wanted to stop for a closer look, but as we were usually driving on highway, we couldn't. Finally we saw this little hillside near a restaurant we stopped at, so of course Daisy and I went over to enjoy them!

The restaurant (it was called The Fish Peddler, and it was attached to an oyster company called Pacific Oyster)  was SO good. I've never tried oysters before and theirs were amazing. Their crab melt, their fish tacos, and their clam chowder were excellent as well. Yum! Daisy liked these cute little smiley fries that came with kids meal. :)

We saw this enormous pile of oyster shells as we drove away.

One night Sam and I went to this darling tiny restaurant, The Rising Star Cafe, up the coast a bit. It only held about 5 tables but the food was SO great--like going to a gourmet chef's house and having her whip up a bunch of stuff for you from her garden. It was gorgeous on the plate too. The owner was friendly and sweet and walked in and out of the kitchen, checking on the meals and talking to the guests. Perfect date night.

View from in front of the restaurant

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