Wonderful Days
We had a really wonderful Christmas season this year. I love that we have built our own traditions and Erik actually knows and expects those traditions. I really love making sure the magic happens, which is something I didn’t have a lot of when I was a kid. My mom worked hard to make sure we had gifts under the tree, but she didn’t really do any of the little extras to make the season shine like cookie baking or hot cocoa nights.
Mike is the decorating king. He is the one who does up most of the house, though I do help. Then he puts together a Swedish Christmas Eve meal and we sit around and eat meatballs in the candlelight. We open family gifts on Christmas Eve night, then Santa comes and leaves stockings for everyone and more gifts for the kids. I really enjoy that little thrill of a Santa stocking, even though I am old enough to know that Santa needs some helper elves to fill them.
We had a major problem this year: Elsa’s main gift had two H pieces and no J piece, which was not discovered until 11 pm on Christmas Eve. Thankfully she’s 3 and didn’t really know she should expect a “big” Santa gift. Santa left a letter explaining that the gift fell off the sleigh and landed in the ocean. He’s having his elves make a new one and will deliver it sometime soon. This was mainly for Erik’s benefit so he would not be upset when she suddenly got this big gift.
The manufacturer did not have good customer service. The part is out of stock and they have no idea when it will be in stock. We ended up taking it back to Toys R Us, but our store did not have another in stock. I have to re-order it online, so who knows when Santa will show up again. At this point I am sorry I left that letter! We should have just returned it and maybe gotten it for her birthday in April. I know she’ll love it, which is why I want it so badly. She was playing with one at a neighbor’s house and literally spent hours with it.
We spent Christmas morning playing with gifts, then went over to our friend’s house for Christmas dinner. We had a blast playing the most inappropriate game ever (Cards Against Humanity). It’s so nice to have a place to go where we can feel celebratory without snide comments with a side helping of guilt. Fun and food is all I need!
Our friends have kids the same age as Erik and Elsa. They are pretty good kids, but man are they spoiled. They get gifts from tons of extended family and it looks completely overwhelming to me (probably at least 30-40 gifts per child). The boy, Irish Lad, turned into a complete goblin and was being a huge, ungrateful brat (even his parents said so).
Though it makes me sad that my kids don’t have much in the way of extended family, at least it means they aren’t spoiled to the core with an overwhelming number of gifts. I’ve got it pretty good with my two kids. They generally get along and are not that demanding about material possessions. Granted, I’ve worked pretty hard to make sure they understand that money doesn’t grow on trees. I’m really proud of Erik because he used his own money to buy Christmas gifts and was excited to do so. He also always buys his sister a treat from the snow cone truck or ice cream man with no prompting at all.
In other news, I’ve been devouring a book called The Passage by Justin Cronin. When I first read about it I had no desire to read about it (near future taken over by vampires? Ugh), but then I kept hearing about it and people I trusted said it was awesome, so I figured I would read a sample. And I can’t. Stop. Reading.
I even figured out how to use the Kindle cloud reader on my laptop (very easy to use, but painful on the eyes) when I couldn’t locate my Kindle. I guess the description of near future world taken over by vampires is accurate, but they are not your shiny, romantic, heart throb vampires that are so popular right now. They are brutal, mindless killers.
The first 30% of the book reads like a modern day Micheal Crichton, then it launches 100 years into the future and it reads like a post-apocalyptic vampire nightmare. I am only 50% into the book and I believe there are two sequels, so I’ll be reading for a while.
Margie said,
December 29, 2013 @ 9:29 pm
We try not to spoil the kids too much. Nor do we do things like iPods and stuff like that. I have to admit, Fae did have a little mp3 player, but she lost it. She loses things so easily that we hate to invest in any kids of small device like that because it will be left somewhere within a matter of weeks.
I have one online friend who has a niece and a nephew, and it’s clear that she dearly loves them. She posted on FB that for Christmas that she had 25 gifts for each of them! I was kind of taken aback because that seems so excessive. But, I know she has mentioned in the past that she won’t be having kids, so she spoils them as though they were her own.