From the "I thought this was a good idea at the time" file...

I joined the Canadian toy testing council a while back. Sounded like a lot of fun. They give us age appropriate toys and we have our children test and we write up a report about them. They take the data, rank the toys and publish the results. I thought it'd be a great way to find out what my kids like without having to commit to buying anything, and my results will help other Canadians choose Christmas gifts this year. Win/win, right?

Well, it sounded like a good idea at the time.

The first 2 weeks we got no toys. Cool. Later, we got two toys at once. Hm, okay. Then the flood. Tons of toys started coming week after week. It was crazy. Each toy was to be played with for about two weeks and then a report needed to be completed. A 14 page report. I'm starting to force the kids to play with half these thing. It's not often you hear of a mother threatening time-outs all around if the kids don't play Mad-Libs one more time.

So now I have 5 14-page reports to fill out by the end of the day. I don't think I'll continue with this. I'm a stay-at-home-mum. If I wanted reports to fill out, I'd work as some kind of public servant. Sheesh.

Anyway, those reports won't fill themselves out so I've got to go. Have a terrific rest of the day. Think of me and my writer's cramp today.

kxx