Team up Thursdays Trio (TUTT) - Topic: Toys

Well, this is my first week participating in the trio and it is nice to be sharing the topic with team mates again!  This was Mariette's choice, so we will start with her picture:

This is of Maxine's (Mariette's daughter) little sister Myrrill, who goes EVERYWHERE with them. Maxine always refers to her as 'her little sister', which Mariette has needed to clarify on several occasions!   This particular picture has Trev's toys in the background...his RC cars!  Where are your toys Mariette?

Next in the trio is Linda with her pic of Google…he was Kayla-Fern’s birthday present from Linda's mom and dad last year – which means in a few days (Kayla-Fern has been counting) Google will be a year old and Kayla-Fern will be ten - two kids in the double digits Linda!  How does it feel?

I love both pics ladies, well done!  I outsourced mine, this week was no less busy than the others so I told the kids to build the word out of their toys - we had a few attempts which lead to this for Ryan:

Very clever don't you think?  Nerf bullets, a metal detector, a jet and a some trains.  April had a go too:

A bubble wand, flute, doggies, barbie and a skipping rope - how girlie don't you think?  And could somebody please tell me why ANYBODY would put a WHITE carpet in a kids room????  Sorry, I digressed but I honestly can't stand it.  This lead the kids on another mission:

What's that?  Oh, it is this . . .

Which becomes this . . . .

Which evolves into this . . .

This was April's project - clever don't you think?  They also wanted to build a toy store out of Lego but got eventually bored and moved onto arguing with each other which is the favorite past time these days.  Does anybody else have that problem?  What happened to my sweet, easy going kids who loved each others company?  One of these days I will turn the hose on them I swear!

Did you realize that none of us ladies posted about our own toys?  Do women have toys?  Wait - let me rephrase that!  Do we have recreational . . . . um, I mean, what do we do for fun?  You know what?  There is no safe comeback!  WHAT I MEAN IS why don't women take 'down time' as easily as men do?  Why don't we play as hard as we work?  I think it is changing, but I still so many of our 'fun' activities and hobbies are centered around our home and family.  Scrapbooking, sewing, decorating, crafts - whatever.  I wouldn't say that we don't take time for ourselves, but if you took a woman's husband and children away, gave her a thousand dollars and said 'go play' - would she know what to do?  Many men I know wouldn't hesitate, they'd probably have a hard time deciding from a list!  Many women I know would have to think about it and would probably find it hard to just go and blow a self-indulgent $1,000 without at least several internal debates, a healthy dose of guilt and perhaps a phone call to a girlfriend for advice!  Don't get me wrong, we do not feel hard done by, do we ladies?  I don't feel begrudged.  But perhaps we should have 'my toys' as a topic one week with a promise to keep it clean to force us to think about (or find something) that we do for ourselves that IS self-indulgent and dripping in joy!