As someone who is currently executing my father’s will, I would advise you to tell them in the harshest terms what a gigantic pain in the butt it is to deal with the bureaucratic aftermath of death even with a will. Without one, OMG, I might almost be willing to say I would leave it all to be handled by the state and let the money go into its coffers. I would guilt them hard in this circumstance. I would tell them that it was irresponsible and cruel to expect you to do extra work on top of grieving them just because they don’t want to behave like an adult. What would take them an hour will take you exponentially more time to handle.

Thank you so much everyone. Everything was at the library except On Our Selection, so I checked it all out, and we can choose by majority vote.

We are soon headed for the beach. I want a campfire story, something to read a bit of each night. Something happy and relatively short. My “kids” are 20, 18, and 17. My how they’ve grown. LOL

Yeah, comedy…? That’s crazy. The thing that kept me in, despite it being so stressful and the fact that I really disliked a few of the characters in the beginning, was that I was so very impressed with the character growth that occurred throughout both seasons, particularly by the end of the first.

If they are into Harry Potter, the new micro-scale castle is amazing.

Totally agree. Last year’s winter village set, Holiday Main Street, was made for a family of 4 to put together, each working on a different part of the set with its own instruction book. I don’t know how many instruction manuals / bags come with this year’s set, Alpine Lodge, but it does have multiple components, so maybe? You could get both for your $200 budget, and if it goes over well, you can add to it each year.

I also love Trader Joe’s body butter. At Christmas time, they sell a box of three smaller tins that goes in my stocking every year. Trader Joe’s Daily Facial Sunscreen is a Supergoop dupe, at a fraction of the cost. I love it!

I do now! LOL You also reminded me we have My Shadow.

I’ll be getting my grand niece The Maggie B for Christmas. DD loved it as a toddler and young child. The pictures are gorgeous—relaxing and ethereal.

And Amazon just reminded me of my love for Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. 🥰

I like poems as books. A particular favorite is Robert Louis Stevenson. We have Block City and The Swing. I just bought the latter for my sister’s first grandchild in April. Same for Dr. Seuss’s ABC, a favorite here, and The Owl and the Pussycat, my very favorite board book of all time, and less likely to be one of many copies a new parent receives. Buying books for children is my favorite pastime.

I absolutely loved it, but OMG yes, as the daughter of an alcoholic, the Christmas episode made me want to hide in a closet. I almost didn’t get through it.

No specific advice, but the book Untangled was amazing. The insights about parenting girls at different ages reminded me of how I felt growing up.

I also considered these cubby drawers designed for craft storage but $$$, and I found them right after we got rid of our IKEA 5x5 cubby. LOL

I am working on this right now as well. We currently have all our LEGO sorted by color, then piece in lots of storage bags in 7 of these 66 qt Sterilite bins. I could probably fill 10 if we disassembled all of what is built and displayed. I do not love this solution, because fishing through the bins to find the right bag is annoying, and the bags start to get cloudy from use. My solution is to buy as many Alex drawer units as it takes from IKEA. Inserts can be expensive, but I have these bins from Target for sorting my bathroom drawers, and they are the best priced option I’ve found for sorting LEGO into the Alex units. I linked the medium, but they come in small, large, and long as well. ETA: Trofast bins are very popular, and they worked for us, but our collection is too big now, and the Trofast don’t lend themselves to being subdivided.