The Season of Giving

This must have been before we got the tree straightened out, but there she be!

This Christmas was a lot of fun. We decided for advent this year, aside from our usual advent calendar scriptures, to choose as a family something kind to do for someone(s) each week. The only rules were it was going to be something we did as a family and it had to be carried out by Wednesday. Our first week we had a friend over for dinner. She's older and although she still has her adult children living with her or very nearby, she mentioned it was nice to get out on her own. She is a remarkable woman and one that Mike and I both have mentioned we would like our kids to know on a personal level. The next week we make cookies and fruit baskets to deliver to our neighbors. The next we had the sister missionaries over for dinner and we all went out and caroled the neighborhood. One neighbor has mentioned twice since then how nice it was to have carolers. It was such a pleasant, fairly laid-back way to feel great, I want to do it throughout the year. And it gave us something nice to discuss as a family on Sunday evening.

I also feel like this year was a success as far as gift-giving, except that I didn't get around to giving gifts to everyone I wanted. Part of that is, ONE person in particular is hard to give to. At least in my opinion. So I just decided to take my dear sweet time and she can get, I don't know, a Martin Luther King gift. 

In the past, Madie has been a hard one to shop for. Here's the thing: she sees dolls and toys in the store and really wants it. So, we'll get one for her and she'll be very excited. Starting around noon on the 25th, she'll stop playing with it and we won't see her touch it again for the rest of the year. The next year, we purge and give it away to someone who might actually care. This year we had it figured out. She thinks she likes toys, but what she really likes and plays with are puzzles and games. She also likes dressing up and getting new clothes. So, we bought and made suggestions to grandparents along those lines. Everything was a big success.

Madie with her two favorite gifts: a silk kimono robe like my own (thank you Grammy and Grampy) and a new board game (thank you Nana and Papa). Other hits seem to be her Supergirl/Wonder Woman/Batgirl panties, her slippers, and the large Frozen coloring book Finn picked out as his gift to her.

 Finn is the exact opposite. He loves toys, especially trucks and tractors and cars. But really any toy. He's okay with getting clothes, but he's not really excited about them. Clothes are hard to guess for him though, sometimes we get something in a hand-me-down box or from the store and he falls in love with it. He even has a shirt he's entitled his "school bus shirt." It looks nothing like a school bus, but he loves it. His favorites this year are the dump truck we gave him and the John Deere truck he bought with the money Grandma Clark sent him. He really likes that one because it came with a little man he can take out of it. He loves that. He even asks to sleep with his "man." 

Here's another favorite. Mike got him a set of power tools and goggles. One of the first sentences said in the house after he opened it was, "No, you don't saw people in the face." That was shortly followed by, "I don't really know how much Elvis likes being sawed either."

Finn and I worked on a Christmas gift for everyone in the house for the week leading up to Christmas. We had tried potty training a little in the past but this time I was in a good place to really do it. So a week and a half before Christmas I told Mike we were really doing it and stayed home for a week. No library, no gym, no playground. He wasn't thrilled, but by the end of the week, he was even napping without a diaper. So on Christmas day we gave him a pair of Spider Man underwear. He refused to wear them for the first four days after Christmas, but when he came trotting out one day with a pair of jeans with a zipper I told him underwear would keep him from getting pinched (he understood this from prior experience). Voila, on went the undies.

It's like watching Kramer at Calvin Klein.

I think the favorite family gift was The Book with No Pictures by B.J. Novak, a gift from Alexa. We've had to implement a one-read-a-day policy for it.

Mike bought me some new boots from L. L. Bean. They're pretty awesome, I must say, and I've received a lot of compliments on them. For Mike, I teamed up with my parents, his parents, and my sister Alexa to buy Mike a new bike. A nice bike. His old road bike was just from Walmart and lasted as long as you would expect for a bike from Walmart. So we trashed it this summer. His winter bike is heading in the same direction, but that's the way with winter bikes. So we got him a brand-new Trek road bike. It came with great reviews and a good recommendation from the man at the shop I went to. He said it was a nice choice for commuting (the primary purpose here) and made a decent race bike (the secondary purpose). 

Unfortunately, we don't have pictures yet of either of those gifts, but we DO have pictures of the gifts we got from my mum, who I am sure feels as confident in her choice of gifts this year as I do in mine.

A compilation of some of C. S. Lewis' best writings. I want to read this together with Mike. Even the few I've already read could stand a re-read. And yes, that GIANT dust pan in the background. We are eternally grateful.

Merry Christmas to you all!