Deciding on a Theme For Our Gifts This Year
We are less than a week away from Christmas and I would say we are almost ready in terms of gifts. I have not started wrapping anything…but that is okay. I actually think that wrapping gifts is fun! I have memories of being young and my mom always wrapped the gifts on Christmas Eve, I was a part of a large family so she had plenty to do and I would get to help her. I’m not saying that I want to intentionally leave wrapping each year for Christmas Eve, but just that wrapping isn’t something I don’t enjoy so whenever I get it done, I will enjoy the process.
I have seen some families who are done shopping like before December even starts, I am not those people…if you are then I think it’s wonderful. But we typically do our shopping in December and as much of it online as we possibly can! Our kids are very blessed to have both set of grand parents live locally and the kids have great relationships with them all; they get completely spoiled on Christmas. Especially when the kids were toddlers and really didn’t know better, we would get the kids small gifts but know the majority of them would come from grand parents. And we would typically get the kids books or maybe pajamas and things they needed while the toys came from grand parents. But as our kids have gotten older we have felt that we don't want the majority of their gifts coming from grand parents. We want to be intentional with what we get them and decided to have a theme this year.
When the weather allows (aka it’s not overly hot in AZ) we like to take family hikes. And this fall we bought a yearly pass to a hiking area near our house so we can go whenever we want. We decided this year that hiking would be our theme for gifts! Vans makes these great MTE line of their shoes which are “made for the elements” so we got each kid a pair of MTE Vans in colors that they liked. Jack’s favorite color is green so we picked those out and the girls all got these adorable rainbow Vans. Danny and I each picked out high top Converse in wide, which I agree are not traditional hiking shoes, but if you have not tried wearing wide shoes you are missing out. I also have a pair of classic white Vans in wide and they are definitely the shoes I wear most.
The kids love collecting things while we are out exploring (don’t worry we do not let them take rocks or things that they should not be) but if they find a random treasure or a stick they like we let them hold it while we are hiking. They enjoy bringing small toys or snacks and as the mom we always end up holding everything, right? Well we found these adorable kids fanny packs on Amazon and each kid will be getting one in their favorite color! I am so excited for them to open these up and then we will be taking a family hike on Christmas!
Smaller Side Gifts
Jack and Eva both love reading and have started reading age appropriate chapter books this year. When he was growing up my husband loved the “Nate the Great” books so those will be going to the older kids (mostly they are for Jack but he will share with Eva). Eva loves her Bible and coloring, we found this adorable Coloring Through Psalms book. And then for the twins we got them “Good Night, Dude Perfect” and a children’s book about joy.
The last things we will be getting for them is art set caddies. I plan to get fresh construction paper, pencils, crayons, and water colors. And fill a caddy with all of their supplies for them as their “stocking stuffers”. We have a few small side gifts that we have grabbed as we see what one of them may like but the hiking supplies and books are their main gifts.
My mom asked what they wanted so I created a little worksheet for them with “Something I want. Something I need. Something to wear. Something to read” so hopefully that will be the guidelines for what they are getting for her. With four kids we tend to acquire a lot of clutter and they are things that they enjoy, but my hope this year was to be more intentional with their gifts. I wanted to make them feel seen and heard by their parents picking out books they will enjoy or things that they have mentioned they would like. We emphasize with our kids that the real gift of Christmas is that God sent his only son as a baby to be our savior. We know that is the greatest gift of all and always hope that the emphasis is that God’s given us the best gift and we want to be extensions of that to one another.
I pray your family has a wonderful holiday and that you feel blessed by Jesus and one another.
