Amazing Amanda

Last year around this time Avery was putting together her Christmas list. She's a pretty reasonable kid when it comes to the things she asks for, so when we examined the list and found the $80 Amazing Amanda doll at the top we felt obligated to get it for her. As a male, it is understood that I just don't get dolls, not to mention ones with such steep price tags. But it doesn't matter if I get it, it's what she wanted and that's what's important. Well, Mandi charged me with picking it up at Walmart while I was out shopping with Lily a few weeks before Christmas. I left it in my trunk until Christmas Eve to keep it hidden, and at around 10:00 as Santa was putting the finishing touches on his work I went out to retrieve it. That's when the roof caved in.

As I set the doll down near the end of the pile of presents, I heard Mandi gasp as though the tree was on fire ("It was an ugly tree anyway"). I turned to find her jaw on the floor, staring bewildered at what she saw. The next words from her mouth will live in Slovick family lore for a long, long time. "You got the black one", she said. "What do you mean? There's more than one?" I asked, realizing that I had pulled one of the all time biggest blunders in recent memory.
To make a long story short, we spent at least a month trying to track down the blond Amanda, all the while keeping Ave convinced that Santa must have just dropped off the wrong one. It ended up costing us an extra $20, but we finally got it right.

So why am I telling this story now? Yesterday Avery brought Amazing Amanda downstairs with a folded up set of toy instructions and asked me to figure out how to make her work. Aside from the first 4 days after we got the right doll, I promise you this is the first time she's picked it up, a whopping 8 months later! It turns out the instructions she had were to something else, so Amanda went back to the bottom of a pile somewhere. I've been assured that a much bigger portion of the Christmas shopping will be done by moi this year, and I can promise you that NO gift will go without a thorough double-checking prior to Christmas Eve this time.