I'm a little behind on my posting, and I apologize for that. I've been busy...two Thanksgiving celebrations took more out of me than usual. Could age have anything to do with that? Shut up, Michael.
So much for my carefully laid decorating plans. If you remember, I'd planned to get all the decorations at least stacked in their bins on the back porch for easy access, and the Snow Village (Dept 56 Original Snow Village mostly, but with a few dollar store and other discount store pieces thrown in for good measure!) put up, but I didn't feel up to it today, so I'm resting, instead. This is one busy week coming up, and I don't need to start it feeling out of sorts, so...the decorating will wait until tomorrow!
Are you cutting back on your Christmas gifting or celebrating this year? We are. We have set a budget for the boys' stuff, with "big stuff" getting the bulk of the money and each one getting one "big" thing, a few small things, and a stuffed stocking. Lynn and I are debating on how much we'll spend on each other...I'm thinking that will stay close to what we normally spend, because we don't spend a whole lot on each other anyway. But we'll have stuffed stockings, because that's our favorite part!
With my family, we draw names and then fill that person's stocking (are we sensing a theme here?). We've set a dollar limit this year for the first time. And on Lynn's side, we've decided not to exchange gifts with his extended family (cousins, aunts and uncles) due to several of us having financial issues. And, we may just do small gifts or no gifts with his sisters-still debating that one. I don't want anyone to have to struggle so that they can give my children or Lynn and me a gift. And we're not exchanging with our best friends, Eddie and Melissa this year either. Melissa and I decided that we'll get together to eat and watch a Christmas movie and have good movie snacks together and call it Christmas! I'm going to see if she and I can work in a girls' day out shopping/lunch trip too! We never get to do that, so it would be a gift to me if we could!
I hope this post is not a downer in any way, because honestly, my intent is for this to be good news. It takes a whole lot of pressure off, and makes the real meaning of Christmas to be more obvious and hopefully, celebrated.
After all, He is the Reason for the Season!
Next post: Christmas parade details! Oh I love this stuff!!!
Merry, Merry!
Cathy
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I agree, it absolutley takes the pressure off! I'm with you, I don't want anyone to struggle to buy me or my kids a gift or have to do without. Although the Chinese gift exchanges are fun, is it really worth someone having to struggle to purchase a gift that they don't even know if the person will like or not? We don't even really need anything. I'm sort of getting tired of my kids greedy attitudes too. They should not expect gifts.
ReplyDeleteWe too are cutting our Christmas Budget this year out of necessity. I appreciate everyone's honesty in our family just saying "No, we can't do it this year". I think this will be happening all across America and it will help if we will just all be honest about it and focus on the True Meaning of Christmas and enjoy a simpler Christmas.
Amen, sister!
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