Christmas 2007

Okay, these past few days have been pretty crazy with house cleaning, last minute shopping, cooking for Christmas. Now that it is over, and before I get back to work preparing for next semester, here are a few reflections:

1. Holiday one stop shopping - we spent a few hectic hours on Sunday and Monday trying to find those last minute gifts. We scurried from store to mall to outlet, getting more and more frustrated by the minute (though we brought it on ourselves, waiting so long). Finally, we decided to stop at our regular grocery store and pick up gift cards. Lo and behold, what did we find? everything on our list that we couldn't find elsewhere! Usually I complain about the high prices at the grocery store because of all the added services they provide, but this time it saved our sanity!


2. Be careful what you buy your children - Having an only child makes Christmas easy and difficult. Easy because you don't need to worry about evening out all the gifts, or getting one child more things than another and having to explain that. However, it is difficult because you wind up getting things that you necessarily wouldn't get if you had more children to worry about. My husband is notorious for getting our son things he really didn't ask for, but thought were so cool (and usually VERY expensive) that he could pass them up. Then many of these cool gifts wind up not being used or creating other problems (like have 4 game systems and then wondering why your child keeps gaining weight!!!!!). This year I joined my husband in that fatal mistake. When visiting my friend Cari in Minnesota, we took our kids to the Mall of America. We went ot the LEGO store and my son saw some really cool toys - like a giant Death Star from Star Wars and a replica of the Eiffel tower. Well, he decided he really wanted to tackle that Eiffel tower, so he put it on his Christmas list. Now, my son being older and wiser, knows not to put frivolous things on his list because he knows he has a better chance of getting what he wants. His list was very short. So of course I went ahead and got the Eiffel tower. Well, when the box came I didn't really know what it was because it was so big and weighed about 20 pounds. I opened and realized that it has almost 3500 pieces, most of which are plain gray! Since I know my son will not put this together alone, I can only pray for strength and patience to get through it.