Good Christmas Gift Idea

In my Boxing Day Reflection post I mentioned that I wanted to get more gifts that instead of being physical things would be things that build memories and experiences. It’s not like we don’t do any of this now I just want to do more of it in the future.

For the past few nights we’ve been playing board games. These were gifts that we bought and had been given. These always make for fun family evenings. Sitting around the living room floor and watching the competitiveness come out in the kids 🙂 They love beating Mom and Dad at games.

Another tradition we started a few years back was to stop buying gifts between our family and my sisters family. We have four kids and she has three, with another on the way, so it adds up pretty quick both in cost and the number of gifts under the tree when we were buying things.

For the past few years instead we plan out an event fun for our families to get together and do. This year we were going to separate the boys and the girls which I wasn’t really fond over. The girls were all going to go do a jewelry making party at a local shop. Us boys were still unsure what we were going to do. Last minute though the shop had to cancel the party so we were looking for something else fun to do.

The kids love the Madagascar movies and The Penguins of Madagascar was playing at the theatre so we all went to see that instead. It was a pretty fun movie. I love how they throw silly things there for us adults to laugh at as well. One common bit of humour throughout was the shouting puns of celebrity names. Things like Nicholas, cage them, and Drew Barry, more power.

Even though you don’t get a chance to talk to everyone at the movies it is still a fun way to spend an afternoon, taking it easy after the busy holidays and building up that memory with family. I like these types of gifts.

Snowman love, as long as it’s indoors

My wife hates winter, and in particular snow. That’s pretty rough seeing as we live where we do.

It’s turned into a running joke with all the kids she looks after and their families. Snow really is a four letter word. Whenever it snows the kids laugh and say Jen’s going to be so mad, or it’s doing the bad word outside.

The funny part is that she loves decorating with snowmen in the winter. She went shopping today and came home with another one.

Here’s a some of the ones we have around the house.

Some presents I enjoy, others not so much

Last night after coming home from our family dinner at my Mom’s house we put Noah to bed and we took the time to enjoy one of our family gifts. We were given the board game PayDay.

I don’t recall ever playing it before, but Jen loved it when she was little. Alex was up in her room putting away her things so Caile, Ella, Jen, and I sat down play. It’s been a while since we had a game night but I’m looking forward to playing again really soon, it’s a good game, but it doesn’t really matter what we play. Caile received Settlers of Catan Junior so we’re going to have to play that soon with them too.

This morning on the other hand I spent way to long doing one of unfun tasks associated with Christmas, assembly. Alexandria got a new desk. They call it an Artist’s Loft Art & Craft Creative Center which translates into hard to put together.

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The kids were in the living room with me while I was putting it together so I kept the bad words in my head, but I do not enjoy putting these types of things together. I only dropped the top of the desk on my foot once, and luckily only barely nicked my thumb with the knife opening the packaging, so it only bled for a bit. I was on a roll with the knife too. I’m not sure how I managed this but the front drawers now each have slit in the front of them that I can only assume I put there when cutting the plastic off them.

It wasn’t really that bad, I put a couple things on backwards so I had to do some parts twice, but that was my fault for trying to go too quick. It’s actually pretty neat and I think Alex is going to get a lot of use out of it.

Boxing Day Reflection

There are so many parts of Christmas that I absolutely love, and I think this year might just be the best one yet. For the first time in years I haven’t felt stressed or Grinch like at all. Maybe it’s because there are just so many other things on my mind lately to keep it busy, or maybe it’s because Jen looked after even more than usual. In any case I’m thankful that I was able to enjoy celebrating with my family.

Last night however, while sitting on the couch after cleaning everything up, and the pumpkin pies for tonight’s dessert were in the oven, I started thinking. I found myself worrying about how I was going to dispose of all the waste that comes with the packaging and wrapping paper. If that is not a hit of reality that you likely have or consume too much I don’t know what is.

Now I have to try to figure out what to do about it. Sometimes I feel like we buy stuff for the kids just for the sake of buying things. Not so much during most of the year, but during gift giving holidays I think this is the case. We do buy a lot of clothes which are certainly things that they can use and we would likely buy anyway. Of course a few fun gifts aren’t going to hurt anyone, but I’m certain we could scale it back. Get them something they really want or need and let that be that.

Maybe instead of more physical gifts we find ways to build more memories together. Not sure how we do that. We talked before about giving up Christmas and taking a vacation somewhere warm as our big family Christmas gift. That would be great, but it would cause us to miss all the other Christmas traditions I love. Getting to spend time with the rest of our family.

At this point I’m really not sure what the answer is, and I’m not confident I can get buy in from the rest of my family, but I’m sure something needs to change. We are at a point where we don’t really need more “things”. Sure we could use new tires for the car, and boring everyday life things like that, but those aren’t things you can put under the tree for the kids.

It’s also hard for me because I know first hand getting together with your friends after Christmas and comparing the things everyone received. It can be difficult when you don’t have either as much or that big gift to share. Obviously that shouldn’t be a big concern as you shouldn’t worry about comparing yourself to your friends or anyone else, but it’s also a part of our reality. There has to be a way we can do both. Scale back the needless things that they might get a few moments of enjoyment with and then not touch again for a long time, if ever, while at the same time give them something memorable that they can talk to their friends about.

There is a solution and it will likely take a shift in the way we consume things in general year round, so it won’t be quick or easy, but I think it will be a good goal to work towards.

Our Typical Christmas Schedule

Seems we’re full of Christmas traditions. We have a almost set in stone schedule for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day. 

It works out well so we can spend lot of time with everyone. Christmas Day is also my Mother In Laws birthday. So we get up in the morning and my in laws come and open gifts with us. 

Then in the afternoon we head to my moms house to open gifts with them. Most importantly though we have a Mexican food style lunch!

Enchiladas, quesadillas, and guacamole. This is one of my favourite meals of the year. Mom makes two versions of everything, a kids version, that lots of adults including my wife eat, then the adult version that actually has some spice to it. 

Soon we’ll head back to our house to have a turkey Christmas / Birthday dinner with my in laws. 

I really love this time of year. Getting together with everyone and sharing good food,  presents, and conversation. 

Hot Toddies Don’t Cure Colds

I was hoping that hot toddies would cure this cold I quickly came down with last night but no such luck. 

I mean they didn’t hurt anything, and my throat feels a bit better, I think. But I’m still all stuffed up and can’t breath right. Now I’m just hoping that they actually help me sleep a bit tonight.

Last night did not go well, and Christmas morning being both sick and tired will not be fun. 

So the morale of this story is: don’t expect hot toddies to cure your cold, but go ahead and have some anyway.

Christmas Eve Gift Tradition

For the past few years we started a new Christmas Eve tradition. We do up one special gift for each kid and let them open it.

The gifts all include the same things and are meant for use tonight. Here’s a play by play of my son opening his.

A new snowman book!
New Santa Jammie’s!
Hot chocolate, mmm I’m going to eat this hot chocolate.
New socks? These look kinda girly.

What a kid.

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Even we put on our new jammie pants, or for me business pants!

Thank You

This year I feel incredibly blessed for many reasons, and I’ll likely get into a more detailed post closer to the end. For now I just wanted to say thank you specifically to Pam one of my amazing new team mates.

Of course no Christmas Eve would be complete without one last trip to grab some forgotten things. So on my way out I stopped to check the mail. Even though I am still very new Pam had taken the time to send me a Christmas card with pictures of her adorable family on it.

Everyone on my team, and the company in general, has made me feel extremely welcome. We all work distributed and I haven’t met anyone face to face yet, so in this digital world of communication I find it’s all the more special to get a card sent in the mail.

Thanks Pam and I look forward to meeting you and everyone else very soon!

Disturbing Wakeup Call

As any parent knows broken sleep is pretty par for the course. There are still many nights when some kid will come into our room having a nightmare, or they aren’t feeling well.

This past while has been fairly bad because of a round of colds going through the house. It seems there has been at least one of them who is up coughing or waking up because they can’t breath through the night.

Last night however the kids slept great. Our cat Zeus however had other plans. It is a disturbing way to be jolted awake at 3:00am by the sound of a cat vomiting on your bed.

Our cross eyed Siamese friend was kind enough to try to get to the edge of the bed at least so only some of it landed on it. The rest splattered across the floor thanks to the height of the bed.

To top it off my wife got mad at me for not kicking him down off the bed. I of course apologized for not being totally aware of what was happening microseconds after being being ripped from my sleep.

If there is a positive to this story though it would be that it’s likely a good sign that at 3:00am, while cleaning up cat puke, you and your spouse are able to laugh with each other at the situation.

One on One Kid Dates

One of my favourite traditions that we started a few years back, is to go out on one on one Christmas shopping dates with our kids.

It’s not very often that we get to spend time alone with one of the kids so it’s nice when we get to do it.

We put let the kids draw either a Mom or Dad name out of a hat. This way we each get two dates. This year it actually worked out the exact opposite as last year. Ella and Noah came with me while Alexandria and Caile went with Jen.

The kids choose where they want to shop and we go pick out little gifts for them to give their siblings. We keep it small so under $10 for each gift.

The shopping is only part of it though. We also let the kids pick out a little snack of some sort and we go and do that with them as well.

I did both my dates today. Noah wanted A cheeseburger for his snack so we went to McDonalds for lunch and then hit the shops. When we were done and home at a good time  Ella and I decided to head out in the afternoon for our date.

While Noah and I were able to do the shopping all in one store, with Ella we ended up at three different ones, but she was happy in the end with what she picked for everyone.

Then to top off the Big Mac I had for lunch, Ella and I had a hot fudge sundae from Dairy Queen. So many calories for a day but also a lot of fun too!