Thursday, August 30, 2007

ENTIRELY too many toys!


From the Mattel website...




Polly Pocket!™ "Affected fashions and other accessories have magnets that are visible from the backside of the part, appearing as a small silver button. Unaffected fashion pieces will have a white coating over the magnets as shown below. The accessories which came with these fashions are also unaffected. These magnets may have a clear or colored coating or cover. Using the images and product numbers below, determine if you own any of these products. All are affected by this recall. Please fill out the last two pages of this pamphlet and, using the prepaid mailing label, return affected product(s) for a voucher. Please return the entirety of each affected product, including all accessory pieces."





Let me just highlight that last line -Please return the ENTIRETY of each affected product, including ALL accessory pieces.




OK...I have 2 daughters and roughly 57,387,541 Polly Pocket pieces. Anyone who has ever seen a Polly Pocket shoe or the ever elusive knotted neck scarf will know that once the plastic case is opened you can NEVER, EVER find all the accessory pieces! Of course that is if you can even get the plastic case opened in the first place but that could be a blog topic for another day. I went away one weekend shortly after the PP craze hit our house. When I came home the girls told me that Daddy had let them play ON THE DECK (you know the pieces of wood nailed together with quarter of an inch gaps??????) In his defense he said, "Well, I put all the pieces on a blanket." Bye bye accessories!




With the 57 million or so pieces we have managed to keep I don't even concern myself with the occasional piece that makes its way into the vacuum anymore. I just figure all the spiders I suck up with it are now fashionably attired in rubber clothes. As an aside, have you seen the PP clothes that are actually SEWN PIECES OF MATERIAL? I can't even hem a pair of pants and people are sewing clothing that is measured in millimeters. No recall on those, though - yet!




Now, we also just recently received the recalled Pooping Barbie dog. What a brilliant toy idea! The poop has been found in my Mom's washing machine, in the car and in nearly every room in our home. Do ya think I have all that poop accounted for??????? I guess I should be thankful that my girls are old enough to know not to swallow magnets or lick their toys but who knows when a magnet or two could fly into your mouth during a pooper scooper mishap with Barbie! My next biggest fear is a reacall of Littlest Pet Shop animals. We've had a bunch of those magnets fall out already and again with a billion or so accessories (give or take a few thousand) I have little hope in returning those IN THEIR ENTIRETY either.




Do you suppose these latest recalls will someday make the "Top 10 Most Dangerous Toys list" Check out this link to see if you have or had any of these "winners" - and what family didn't have a set of those fun but deadly lawn darts? I speak the truth when I share that a high school classmate lost an eye to a lawn dart. And a friend's neice was recently hospitalized with a serious skull fracture caused by a horseshoe. Of course both of these incidents involved siblings so one will never know if they were indeed accidents or not!







EDITED TO ADD: I changed the font size from normal to large - seems the optometrist was right when he suggested this might be my last pair of single vision lenses!




Wednesday, August 29, 2007

They drive me crazy!


Although they do at times drive me really crazy "I" would never be crazy enough to let them drive a lawn tractor, at least not until they had gone through driver's ed. Geez...growing up I wasn't even allowed to touch our push mower, or the axe for that matter, right Dad?


Anyway, Dan let Allie drive and she was pretty cautious. She only tried to tip Erin out a few times (just joking!) She'll probably be a better driver than me in no time (no comments from the sidelines, please!) I still don't have this whole ride-on thing down yet, especially with regards to a flight plan (AKA how to mow the entire lawn without going over the same area 14 times trying to get to another area.)


So, this lawn tractor is mine, ALL MINE. I have always been the chief lawn mower and generally, when it isn't 48 degrees, I dont mind mowing. "Exercise with a purpose' is how I rationalize it. This spring was a stellar grass growing season and at 3 hours for each complete push mowing of the lawn I was getting tired. So, I had my neighbour check out this tractor for sale and he told me what I should pay, brought it home, did some maintenance and gave me my lawn tractor 101 lesson. Dan knew this was in the works but left all the details up to me. Of course while he was home on leave he did get to use it. After I mowed he suggested he could "help me out" by hooking up the trailer to pick up the clippings. Sure Dan...I can see right through your helpful suggestion. He just wanted to get on that thing and ride it! That's all right though as I needed him to cut the slopes on the side anyway - I'm too scared I'll tip!