Christmas this year was a lot of fun. The older the boys get, the more fun the holiday is. And my husband is very generous and great with gift giving, so Christmas was pretty great for me too.
On Christmas Eve we did Christmas with Keith's family. The adults in his family draw names, so Keith's brother in law had my name and I had Keith's name (Keith drew his mom's name.) I got 2 seasons of Friends and an iTunes gift card. I'm only 1 season short of owning the entire series, so I'm really excited about that. I bought Keith a polisher that he's been wanting so I think he was happy with that.
The boys of course scored big with their gifts. We got home about 9pm that night, the boys took a quick bath, went bed and then "Santa" got busy assembling toys and stuffing stockings and bringing out wrapped presents.
Under normal circumstances, I put wrapped presents under the tree as I get them done. But with a toddler in the house I didn't even attempt it this year. Thankfully Santa only had one major gift to assemble this year, so we weren't up until midnight like I know we were last year. Since the boys went to bed a little later than normal, they actually slept until about 8am on Christmas morning. That's always nice!
Santa had respectfully hidden his gifts, so the only things the boys saw when they came out in the living room were the stuffed stockings (laying with care by the fireplace. Don't know how Santa hangs stuffed stockings by the chimney with care, unless he nails them into the bricks or something. I've yet to get a stuffed stocking to stay hanging on my stocking hangers on the mantel...) and the wrapped presents under the tree.
The night before I had made a pan of cinnamon rolls, so I quickly iced them, we ate breakfast and then the present-palooza began. I figured it would make for a less cranky present time if the boys had eaten rather than waiting until after the fact. Santa brought Cooper the Fisher Price Laugh and Learn house and Garrett got Monster Truck Lightning McQueen, Monster Truck Mater and a kid-friendly real digital camera. They were both really excited with their gifts, though they had to each take a moment and play with the other's present before we moved on to stockings.
Thankfully this year, Cooper understood the unwrapping concept, but he was very meticulous with it and took much longer to open than Garrett preferred. Plus, he occasionally got annoyed with himself for the amount of time he was taking, but other than that he had a lot of fun.
I just want to share a couple of thoughts I have on gifts at Christmas time. While I know of many families who espouse to the "each child gets 3 gifts for Christmas because that's how many gifts Jesus got" belief. I do not. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it, it's just not our preference. But lest I sound like someone who is breaking the bank for Christmas however, I have to share that I begin Christmas shopping in the early fall (I would start even earlier, but with my boys at their current ages, it's too hard to do much shopping for them that far in advance. Their sizes change quickly, their preferences change quickly.) But in starting my shopping as early as I do, I keep a very close eye on specific items that I already have in mind, so that I can snatch them up at a discount. This worked really well for me this year. I did roughly 95% of my shopping online and paid very, very little in shipping (and what I did pay in shipping were for hard to find items.) Toys R Us had a huge sale over Halloween weekend and I bought the majority of the boys' Christmas then. We have a set amount of money we spend per child and when that's spent, we're done. I try to do my best to wrap things in a way so that they have roughly the same number of toys to open under the tree. Thankfully they're young enough not to realize that Cooper just opened 2 Veggie Tale movies in one gift versus 1 Scooby Doo movie in Garrett's box.
I managed to surprise Keith with one of his gifts this year. Each Christmas, we both give each other a list of ideas for gifts. Even though we live together and have known each other for 12 years, it's not always easy coming up with gift ideas so the lists go a long way to insuring that we have a general idea of what the other one is wanting/needing. Over the past several years, Keith has mentioned at different points how he couldn't wait for the boys to be old enough to buy them a remote control helicopter. He had never played with one before and just knew they would be a lot of fun. So I started researching them to get an idea of what would be a good one and came across an amazing deal. I figured a smaller helicopter that could be flown indoors would probably be the best choice, so I found one on Amazon, read reviews on it, crossed my fingers and ordered it. As it turns out, he has loved that thing and "plays" with it almost every day. Of course it wasn't on his list, so I was able to surprise him with it which makes it even better.
Once Christmas is over, I'm ready to take down the tree and move on with the year, but Keith called me a scrooge this year when I attempted to do this the day after Christmas. So we compromised and I took down all decorations except the tree then, and took it down on New Years.
2 comments:
Lydia, I'm with you on the 3 presents thing. Maybe it's because that was never an idea in our house and we were raised having lots of presents at Christmas!! I don't know. I think part of the fun of Christmas is having a bunch of gifts and diving in on Christmas morning! I think we both agree Christmas isn't only about presents but I think you can have a good balance with that. My neighbor does the 3 presents thing and her kids seem fine with it.
One thing, in the near future, I want to start doing again IS that Mike and I get gifts for each other. Since we've had kids we never seem to have enough money left over for gifts for each other. And I hate that! Mike grew up with his parents not giving each other gifts and his mom is almost self righteous about it. (Granted, they get what they want for themselves all year long but anyway...). I want the kids to see Mike and I getting gifts for each other and possibly starting to take the girls to shop for each parent as well. They loved getting each other $5 gifts with THEIR money. They could do that for us too. I don't think it's right for parents not to EVER get each other anything for Christmas.
That's neat that you surprised Keith. I love gifts like that! And Katelyn got a kid friendly digital camera too!
sounds like a great Christmas!
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