the american girl

This story begins a little over a year ago when Ava discovered American Girl dolls.  She decided that was her little dream, to have her very own doll.  After giving it a lot of thought, mainly trying to decide if this was a road we wanted her to travel, we decided to help her make a plan to achieve her goal.  (cause there was no way we were paying that kind of money for a doll).  We made a chart and each time she earned money through a job, or more recently her lost teeth, she saved.  And then she saved some more...and more....and more....until FINALLY she reached her goal of $100!  That is a lot of money, period, but for a seven year old that's pretty amazing.

Let me back up a few days...we decided to watch the Seahawks game on Thursday with Brian's parents.  While she was in Georgia, Annette (Gramma) snagged an AG catalog.  Oh. My. Gracious.  She was hooked.  While she enjoyed looking through the whole catalog, this girl found "the one" and that was that.  Saige was the one.

After researching the whole American Girl doll buying experience I found only one actual store in our area.  In Lynwood.  She was none to pleased that it would take about 45 minutes to get there, but still very excited.  But first, we dropped Noah off for some Grampa time!

Brian and I took Ava out to lunch and then it was finally time to get that doll!  To give you an idea of how motivated she was...after lunch I popped into Starbucks for a Chai Tea Latter (YUM), and offered to buy her a cake pop or sugar cookie.  Her response, "no thanks mom...I'm just into being healthy."  Before you get too impressed, that was code for "no thanks, that could prolong our stay at Starbucks and delay my arrival at destination American Girl."

Almost there......FOUND IT!  We're goin' in.  It only took about two minutes and she found Saige...well several Saige dolls to be exact.  I love the third picture, she's pointing to Saige and telling daddy this is the one.

She was done shopping. This was the one. We are the ones that took her around the rest of the store, which she later described as being "a little smaller than Costco." It was rather large for a doll store. This place had a tea room, a salon, and a doll hospital folks. Yup. After doing one short lap she was ready to go. Time to check out.  That's a serious pile of cash.  The cashier asked if she wanted the doll out of the box now or take her out at home.  Was that a serious question?

No big surprise here...she had the whole American Girl crew lined up for bed. First, we have Bitty Baby Karen, given to her by Great Aunt Karen when she was about three years old. I had no idea it was an AG doll! Well done Aunt Karen (and Uncle Bob!). Next, after we told her Santa didn't do the big girl AG dolls, she was just as excited to get little Rebecca in her stocking. Last, but not least, we have Saige all tucked away in her box bed (it's okay, you can think it...a little coffin-ish, no?). One very tired but very pleased little lady.