One Resolution I Think I Can Keep

Many people have different ideas about Christmas, using it as a time to gather family, celebrate the birth of Christ, stress, and receive presents.

For me, Christmas is about giving.

I do love having my family together, but there is nothing better than to see someone's face light up, or tears or joy and appreciation when they open the present that I have spent hours picking out, and wrapping up.

Unfortunately this year, that's not going to happen. Due to our unfortunate circumstances, there just isn't anything extra. I hope that I never make my children suffer for my mistakes, so I decided that this year I'm only doing gifts for the kids.

I had thought about making donations to charities in their names, but I don't think they are at ages where they will appreciate the motivation behind it, and since I won't be there to prep them on gratitude, maybe this isn't the best year for that. I had thought about a No Presents At All stance, but I love giving too much, and again, I didn't want the kids to have any less of a Christmas because we aren't well-off right now.

And I realized that most of my budget was allotted for the adults, the gifts I wanted to get them were hundreds of dollars more than I spend on the kids, and there are a lot more adults than kids around this year. Kids are fine with a new toy or a $40 gift certificate. Adults I always want to WOW. And we just can't do it.

So. I decided, absolutely NO gifts for adults whatsoever this year. Cookies, dinner, yes, but no gifts. It's hard, because I had already mentally picked out gifts for most people but I can't go into debt now, not at this point in my life, not when I need to use my savings to pay the mortgage.

And the cool flip-side of that is that maybe I can put the money I was planning to spend on Boogie in her savings account, because if Nonny agrees to no gifts for me and P, that' smore for Boogie, right? *wink*

EH. We'll see how this goes. I might just find something I can't resist buying for a friend, and then it's all to shits.