Gift Exchanges 2009

Wow, I reached the month of December. I might just get to 2010 before the end of January :)


We all know that December is a busy social month. At the end of November we had a housewarming party and then after that we put a hold on any further unpacking or reorganizing. The house was mostly organized, and definitely homey and settled, but the basement remained a disaster that just got worse over the month of December as we put everything we didn't know what to do with down there. Our bedroom is still in need of some work, some shelves to better arrange the office area and allow me to unload the remaining Rubbermaids we keep tripping over. But all in all, close the door to our bedroom or the basement, and it was home!! Over time those things will get done (the basement is done, just waiting for those shelves in our room ... that is after my van is fixed, yup almost three months now, good thing we have a second vehicle, altho the van would have been fixed faster if we did not).


So we settled into December with the usual gift exchanges, Christmas programs, social gatherings, family get-togethers, etc. It was nice!!




Gift Exchange Evening at my parents:

Rebecca collects spoons ... so now she has a place to hang them

After the kids were done opening their presents the adults had there turn. Instead of exchanging names this year we decided to keep the cost down and play the gift game (have no idea what it's called, but I'm sure most of us have played it at one point). We each bought a $10 gift of something useful ... seeing as we're all married it didn't really matter too much if it leaned towards one sex or the other. The first person picks a gift from the pile and then the next person can steal his gift if he likes it or pick a new gift ... and so carries on the game until everyone has a gift.

Rob thought it would be funny to do something humorous. My brother, Nathan, was the lucky person who got his gift ... a package of feminine hygeine pads. Seeing as that doesn't cost $10 Rob balanced it off with a bottle of carwash soap ... that way box sexes could enjoy the package :)

Nathan thought these would have great absorbency for drying the car after he washed it. Rob who thought his idea was so great at home was several shades red when it came time to open the present

The "kids" pooled together to buy my parents a present. This year we had their old 8mm films transferred over onto DVD. Dear talented Aileen designed covers for the DVD and put it together in a nice package. So after gifts we all vegged out together and watch some silent videos from the "olden days" :) teehee, we're not the old, really!!

In previous years our kids believe in Santa and so we had one gift exchange evening at my parents ... where somehow when they weren't looking Santa came and dropped off some presents ... but he was always gone before they got a chance to see him. The girls were struggling with this Santa story, feeling sure that Santa was really mom and dad, but not really wanting to admit it. Or maybe scared if they admitted it they wouldn't get presents anymore. Whatever the case, last year we finally confirmed that there is no Santa it's just mom and dad and grandpa and grandma.

So this year Marietta very much wanted to do a name exchange like she had seen us do before (but couldn't understand why we were doing it). We decided to exchange names within our little family ... which doesn't make it very difficult to figure out who has your name. We took a couple presents with to my parents as we had always opened all our presents there, but we didn't tell the kids that there were more presents for the next night.

Rebecca opening her present from Marietta

We were pleasantly surprise when Rebecca added an additional present to the pile, one other then the one she had for Marietta (who's name she had). For some time she had bee quite busy at the craft table upstairs, always making sure no one seen what she worked on. We upwrapped the fruit of her labours ... a scrapbook she had made of our family with old extra pictures I had given them. The only person missing in the scrapbook was Matthew as I have no extra pictures of him since I have not started his photo album yet, and now that we have a digital camera I don't really have extras very often. It was precious to see she had put time and effort into doing something on her own without even being told or having it suggested that they could make presents.

Most of the time the presents the kids get are things they needed anyways ... like new leotards (I think they get that every year), any clothes they might need (pjs this year and new Sunday coats, and Rebecca is wearing a new sweater she received), a book or two, craft stuff, and then usually some sort of fun/toy thing. Usually in their stocking I put church candies and something small like nailpolish. Since the kids are quite good at saving their candies and like to be able to pick out what type of candy they want for church each week this year I put together a bag of candies for each of them, with droopies, peppermints, mentos, jolly ranchers, and fruitella's. Let just say they were quite thrilled by this gift.

But not as thrilled as they were over their last gift ... a piece of paper!! :)

We love Kijiji!! Fall time is a great time to buy a trampoline. In this case we got it super cheap simply because the guy was doing renovations in his house and didn't have room to store it for the winter so he decided to sell it. The kids are looking forward to the warmer weather so they can enjoy it!! Again ... we love the country ... this would have taken up almost our whole backyard before.