I LOVE your idea and can't wait to do the same with my grand daughter who is 2 years old now. I worked long hours while raising my three children alone and did a similar thing on much smaller scale with each of my three children - giving them each an hour or so alone with me each week. There things might be more activity than you would wish for but we have always loved the outdoors. My son had few interests and was the most difficult for me to connect with. Things he LOVED: flying a kite, roller skating, miniture golf, video games, rafting down a little fork of a nearby river that took us a number of weeks to build the raft from trashed lumber(bad time of year for you and I don't know where you live in Washington), BBQ breakfast on a tiny grill in the wilderness park (bacon on toast with hot cereal and fruit brought in a thermas was fast and easy then we would go hiking. I know you could take easy snacks without the trouble of the grill but he LOVED to eat hot food in the wide open spaces and it just tasted better there. Things he did not like but your grand son may: bicycle a along wetlands or beach or natural trail, walk thru a botanical garden, plant a tree (my carrotwood and palm trees were always dropping seedlings)in the countryside, scrapbooking, ceramics you mentioned, bought him a disposable camera and spent a day learning basis photography skills and taking pictures of family members, pets, friends, school or whatever he wished for a "My Life in 1974" (or whatever year it was), made a family tree collage from baby pictures of all the family members, built a bird house, bat house, visited the zoo, visited the farm that sells parrots, visited an ostrige farm, visited a llama farm, visited a turkey farm, had him write a story, and draw illistrations that I had bound into a book but now you can buy kits over Amazon.com for books you can have published and dishes they paint, send in and have made permanent. In fact, I have seen kits on Amazon.com to paint their own umberella, table lamp, cup, bird bath, bird feeder, bird house, etc. Also Home Depot or Lowes have kits for bird houses, bird feeders. I don't know if ANY of these ideas can work for you, but good look and I am sure you will get some GREAT suggestions. My girls LOVED to go for "high tea" where a friend of mine who owned a British tea house. (I was a nurse and massage/accupressurist and we would do trades). I do not know that your grandson would enjoy high tea. Also, the children LOVED to go to a really fancy restaurant (we could not afford to eat at) but on special occasions I would order each a Shirley Temple type of drink and we could overlook the harbor or bay to end a wonderful day. Oh, we use to drive to Disneyland and watch the grand finale fireworks in the Disneyland Hotel sipping a juice or milk. I don't know if you have anything in your area that you can get a "piece of".

I really like that doo-hicky blade thingy that I can scrape dough up off of a surface, or use to divide a lump of dough in two. I've started using it more frequently as I bake. I just can't remember what it's called. For a higher price bracket, a nice mortar and pestle would be a good gift. One that's large enough to do a lot with. I have a small one that I grind spices with occasionally, and I use it when I make my own salad dressing, or pesto, but mine is too small to make a good batch of pesto. I know that food processors make that a fairly easy job, but they're a hassle to clean, and I love using the pestle. Today I was crushing cumin seed for some lentil soup. It smelled so good, with the scent wafting up from the mortar to my nose. Of course, a modern young woman may look at you cross-eyed if you gave her something like that, but I'd love it. Weren't there some people here talking about some kind of dough whisk they really loved? Sally

Softball, I see some good ideas for next year in your list. The kids gave us a digital picture frame for all our pictures from when we got married to now, 40 some years later. Can't remember what it is called. It plays them or freezes. Older DS loaded it so we could use it as soon as we opened it. I had forgotten some of those pictures. Gads, I looked thinner and better in my younger years! I wanted and received a screech owl house from younger DS. We live close to a preserve, and this area is over run with mice and rats. I wish I could have gone for a barn owl house for the rats, but they make too much nocturnal noise for us and the neighbors. This will help and be interesting to watch. DH gave me a new closet to be installed later. New shelves, rods, etc. by California Closets. We are not do it yourselfers and the builder's lousy rods and shelves are kaput.

Timely post as I was just thinking about this not a half hour ago as I followed the Post guy’s truck up the road, one house at a time...for what seemed like miles. I’m not glad to see that we are the only one’s that have been frustrated with the USPS services but I am relieved to know it’s not just me and my expectations for a door delivery are not too high. Most all packages we get are crammed in the box at any expense, but when they’re just too big for the box, I find them on the other side of our porch which means they’re literally tossed over the railing (out of eyesight) and no where near the door. It also seems to be a different person every day, so no, I’m not leaving anything out for any of them. Just my opinion but I think the genious who decided that carriers like UPS and Fed EX should partner up with the USPS really didn’t think that one through. It’s bogged down the USPS and service is no where near what it used to be (and it wasn’t great back then!)