Christmas shopping

The missus and I had taken a day off work today and while we had some spare time, we headed out to Toys "R" Us to do some Christmas and birthday shopping. An all-round good idea primarily as we avoid the Xmas shopping crowd this way and also due to the early bird discounts available for purchases in November.

One of the things which the missus noticed while occasionally visiting Gordon at the pre-nursery he goes to is that he really likes to play with the kitchen set during the free time period. Interestingly enough, Gerry also loves playing as a chef which resulted in the missus commenting that it was funny how gender roles have been reversed in HK as it seems that guys are generally the ones who like to cook.

We do have a kitchen set at home but its pretty beat up as we purchased it several years ago when we were in the UK. As a result, when we saw a pretty big kitchen set on sale (big enough to allow two kids to play with it at the same time!), we jumped at the chance to add it to our shopping cart. We figured that this would make a great birthday present for Gordon come January.

We knew that the kids would kick up a big fuss if they saw this huge kitchen set so as soon as we got home, we tried to hide the box away. Its funny, you don't really get an appreciation for how big a box is until you try to find somewhere to hide it. In the end, we stuck it away in a corner away from where the kids normally hang out.

Gerry has a great eye for detail which is normally a good thing. Unfortunately, it worked against us today as our hiding place couldn't escape his eagle eyes. Within minutes of coming home, he had spotted the kitchen set and threw a sulk when he realised that a) it wasn't his; and b) it wasn't going to be opened today.

Ultimately, he got his way. After dinner, we opened up the kitchen set and built it up. After wishing Gordon a quick happy birthday, he set about to playing as a chef with Gerry - who ended up playing with it much more than Gordon did as he kept grabbing pots and pans out of Gordon's hands (before ruefully handing them back after a quick scolding from me!).

Happy Birthday Gordon - hope you enjoyed your present...