Christmas

We finally have settled on what we are going to do for Christmas this year. We've decided to buy presents for some of the children in the group foster home in our town. I wish there was a way to buy presents for all of them, but there are twenty kids there now and unfortunately I can figure a way to make that happen. They do have a lot of presents for the kids from other donations, so we are going to focus on a child who has a birthday on around Christmas, and another child that our friends are trying to adopt that spent time in the home.

We're also going to bake a ton of cookies and deliver those to both the group home and also the Ronald McDonald House in Lubbock. We were going to do gifts for the kids on the pediatric ward of a local hospital, but BW couldn't do it with us, he was too young to be on the floor. Instead, I've decided to donate all the baby things I have to them, rather than trying to sell them. I figure they will be better used, and also, since BW was a preemie and in NICU for two weeks before we could bring him home, I have a soft spot sick kids and their families.

It doesn't even look like Christmas in our home. I haven't decorated at all, and quite frankly, it's a relief. I hate decorating. I know, I know, bah humbug, right? Seriously, I have a hard enough time keeping my house clean. There's no need to add to the mess with unpacking boxes and boxes of things that suck electricity and are out for a month (OK, two months), and then having to spend the time packing it all back up again. I love the holidays, I love the lights and decorations, don't get me wrong. What I don't love is the work involved, the mess, and the higher electric bills. We have been enjoying everyone else's work, instead. I'd like to take this time to thank the (decidedly small) handful of people in our neighborhood who have bothered to put up lights this year: Thanks, neighbors! Your homes look lovely!

So this year is going to be waaaayyyyy off, holiday wise. We've never not decorated - it's strangely freeing. We've never not bought each other tons of gifts. I've still bought gifts for a few people in our lives. I have some that need to be shipped out here tomorrow and then I'll be through with that. I'm going to spend the rest of this week deciding on what kinds of cookies to make and find some easy snack type things for us to eat on Christmas day. We still have to pick our gifts for the children we're buying for, and we'll do that as a family one evening this week.

All in all, I think we're pretty satisfied with how our Christmas is going. It's too early to call it a success, but it's looking promising.