Day 48 - 1,444 Fun Things to Do with Kids (Give)

I got this book last spring and flipped through quite a few pages now and then.  There are tons of good, creative ideas in it which would apply to kids of varying ages.  But the book doesn't inspire me to do fun, creative things with my kids ... it just makes me feel guilty.  I mean, we don't even seem to have the time and energy to do even mundane, ordinary things with our kids.  We have a garage full of bicycles and how many times did we go for a bike ride together this past summer or fall?  Exactly zero!  Now that's not to say that we don't do things with the kids at all - we're a pretty active family - it's just that our family time ends up being "spoken for". 

So I've had this book for 8 or 9 months and haven't used any of the ideas yet.  Sounds like a good candidate to be given away. 

The only down side of giving a book to someone is that nagging fear that he or she will place it on a shelf and ignore it.  But I gave this book to Keri, our friend, neighbor and small group leader, so there's a very good chance this book will actually get used.  Keri homeschools her kids and she's really good at proactively planning activities for her kids - they are always going to visit a farm or help a neighbor with chores or something (and that was even before she started homeschooling this fall!).  When I stopped by her house and gave her the book yesterday (Christmas Day), she said that Melissa had told her about it when I first got it and she had almost bought a copy for herself at the time because it sounded like such a good book to have handy.

I figure this will be a win/win situation.  Our kids now have a better chance of benefitting from the book than if I had kept it here.  Here's how:  if I'm right in guessing that Keri will actually make use of the book and "test-drive" some of the ideas with her kids (who are roughly the same age as ours), then she's also bound to pass along the most enjoyable ideas to Melissa - and warn her about the flops - since they're always swapping stories over the phone. We'll get the ideas that are "keepers" without having to read the book ourselves!  Anyway, that's the way I'm hoping it works out. 

Pretty selfish Give, huh?