Help me out here. Especially you guys. I like to indulge our 5:15 Sunday Mass servers with little gifts at their birthdays and Christmas. We have one boy and one girl who take turns alternating at that Mass. Both turn 11 this coming week. Our little buzzsaw, Catherine, presents no problem for me -- knowing that type intimately having been one myself. I checked with her mother, and she's not seen The Trouble With Angels nor the sequel, Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows. So that should cover her.
But Francis....ah....I haven't any immediate family and it's a long time since my male cousins were 11.... I get a general feel for things, but I would *love* to nail the right gifts for him. Something with a max price range of about twenty bucks per gift. Less is good...a tad more is okay, if it's not in the "xboxy not happening" category. He *loves* baseball. Loves to read, is quite a good pianist for his age, and good at the arts. I got a note back from his sister, whom I'd written to see if he'd had "The Dangerous Book for Boys," and he hadn't been given it last year, So I'm pretty sure that will be one of the gifts.
But I am WRACKING my brain about that second gift for him. If this was the "pre-PC days" I would have just gotten him a small Swiss army pocket knife and been done with it - as that's what boys of 11 most wanted, by my observation, when I was 11. Can't do that anymore without there being a federal case out of it or "film at 11."
It used to be fairly standard for all males to "pack" one. (Some time back after Mass one night the discussion came around to "things confiscated at airports" and I mentioned how men of my dad's age always carried a pocket knife. The Sainted Msgr. S. promptly whipped a fairly substantial pocket knife out of his pocket and said "yup! from the time I was around 10-12 I had one."
If you're a guy, what did you get about age 11 (that wasn't overly expensive) that you REALLY enjoyed? What *specific* Books? Games? Objects? If you have sons around that age now, what do they really like? (Moms and others with male 11 year old relatives who scored a hit with a present recently feel free to add to this too.)
In Catherine's case, both movies have a nice religious angle to fun stories. Even with the movie lists I came up with I'm trying to think of if there's one that has a religious angle to it that an 11 year old boy might really enjoy... IF "the mouse" got their act together and re-released ALMOST ANGELS *(about the Vienna Choir Boys - quite fun and I think this particular boy would enjoy it.) I'd get him that - but for some reason, they haven't, AFAIK.
Last year I got them books about saints who had their same first names, and their "Saint Medals."
A virtual "gold star" to any blogger who can guess where the picture came from. My British bloggers will probably have a leg up on this one.
(*If you go to a certain well know video website you can *cough*cough* see most of this film ... keepvids.com comes in rather handy....)
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