Santa and a book talk

I may have to put the kabosh on Santa this year. Seriously. This is how I came to this conclusion...

The American Girl catalog arrived this week. I made the girls finish their homework and eat dinner before they could look at it. Then they each took a turn looking through it, pen in hand, circling the items they coveted the most. Each girls circled around 83 items in the catalog, so I sat on the couch with them and we ranked their top 5 wanted items. Chandler's list was most impressive and looked like this...
1. Rebecca's costume chest...$100
2. Julie's banana seat bike...$80
3. scooter....$49
4. Julie's calico dress...$28
5. Heeley's (for the doll!)...$18
So then we had a conversation that went a little something like this....

Me: You know, Chan, that dress up trunk is, like, $100. That might be all that you get.
Chan: *seriously alarmed* From who? From you? From Santa? My only present?
Me: Well, I don't know. But a $100 is a lot of money...especially for one thing.
Chan: Mama, don't worry, I know its a lot of money. I'll just ask Santa for it. Santa can really make ANY toy.
(Casey is nodding her head furiously in agreement, Chandler is relaxed...problem solved.)

I had to send the girls up for a bath before I told them about the furlough days and the 2.4% pay cut that Santa and Mrs. Claus had to take this year.

On a completely different note...

I was teaching a class of 3rd graders about choosing a "just right book" a couple of weeks ago in the library. We were talking about the 5 finger rule and being like Goldilocks and finding a book that was not too hard and not too easy. One thing led to another and we started talking about how the length of a book does not matter when it comes to the level that the book is written on. The phrase that I chose to describe this was, "size doesn't matter." Oops.