Christmas Morning

Joe and I have decided to to one thing very differently from my parents on Christmas morning. We've decided to NOT give our kids every toy that Toys R Us can fit in one store. My Christmas' were WONDERFUL as a kid. Each of us got our own color of wrapping paper with gifts inside that came out to the middle of the living room, we also had our 1-2 BIG Santa gifts that were unwrapped and then our stockings were overflowing...I honestly believe that my mom had more fun seeing the tree and us tear threw the forests of paper than we EVER had in opening the gifts. My mom was VERY structured about Christmas and made sure we all had about the same number of gifts and that each of our amounts added up to around the same value. She must have felt crazy by the time she started wrapping them all. Joe and I are very different. It probably started because we never know what to get Ella and have only given her 1-2 presents for the last 4 years because there really isn't anything that she "wants". We decided to carry this on each year and only give the kids a couple of gifts that they will really enjoy, and let uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents fill in the blanks (not that we have many toy blanks in our house). This year we gave Ella a baby doll (because I felt like it was age-appropriate and something that was safe for her to play with each day) and a shopping cart, see previous post, because she can actually use it to learn to walk (we just need weights to keep it from coming down). William was a lot easier to buy for, but hard to know where to stop...he got cowboy boots (if you know Joe, then you know this is VERY appropriate) and Little People Airplane and Barn sets. It's been so funny to watch Ella try to take his plane and he puts all of his toys in her shopping cart and takes off...I guess they are pretty typical siblings. It was so nice to enjoy Christmas as just the 4 of us...till we headed to the Mitchell's...stay tuned.