Wow.

Grace handed out her invitations today at school. Within 1.5 hours of arriving home, I already had calls for 5 kids definitely coming to the party, which is over a month away. The moms I talked to sounded so excited! One asked if she could bring her other two kids (I said sure!) because she thinks they'll love it too.

They also started talking about the donations they're bringing for the center (as we suggested in the invitations). One's husband works at a dairy farm (or factory or something. I dunno. LOL!) and is bringing home a bunch of 5-gallon buckets. Another mom has 2 huge bags of bird seed she was going to just throw in her yard since her feeder broke, but now she's bringing it to the party to donate to the center. That's so freakin' cool!

It seems like the parents are just excited there's a party somewhere new. Believe me, every mom in Grace's class is really kind of getting sick of parties at the local roller-skating rink, the hotel pool, and the gymnastics center. Not that the kids don't have fun, but it's nice to have something different to do, ya know?

The worst though is when these parents call to RSVP and then ask what they should buy Grace. Uhhh.... I dunno. LOL! She has every toy ever invented. And they certainly don't need anything. So I just ramble off a very general list.... she loves anything having to do with snakes and sharks... she loves crafts and art-type stuff... she likes animal encyclopedias so she can memorize random facts about animals... and she HATES any typical girl toy you can imagine. I swear, the poor kid has gotten more Barbie dolls and My Little Ponies than you can imagine that she plays with for 5 minutes and then tells Hannah she can have 'em. I swear, I almost put something in the invitations that said, "When shopping for Grace, please bypass the girl aisles and head directly to the gender neutral and/or boy aisles please." LOL!

But I'm kind of hoping that the fact that she's a girl and is having a reptile party where you can touch slimy shit is going to be a clue enough for moms to realize that she's not a girly-girl at all, and probably wouldn't appreciate that princess dress-up gown that would surely be a hit with some (most?) other 6-year-old girls. LOL!

And Tink, oh my god... Grace would LOVE the gator farm! Like, I'm not even kidding. She would totally volunteer to attempt the whole mouth tying thing. Tonight, she insisted on watching Animal Planet instead of Spongebob, and when they showed extreme closeups of some red ants being eaten by some other preditor insect, she said (and I quote), "Awwww... poor little red ant." And yesterday, she seriously got PISSED OFF at me because I stepped on an ant. What the hell? The child is a damn freak if you ask me. Who likes ants for the love of god. LOL!