Chri$tma$
I bought our plane tickets to Arkansas for Christmas. $800 each for four tickets. If you can do simple math, then you know that I just spent $3200 to go to ARKANSAS from OREGON. Just for fun - and because we had talked about going there in 2010 - I priced flying to Germany for 10 days in March. They were only $80 more per ticket. Needless to say, we will not be able to do both Arkansas and Germany in the next year, so Arkansas it is. It hurts, people. It hurts. And don't get me started on the fact that those tickets were the cheapest I could find, they're on Southwest Airlines, and we have two stops in each direction.
BUT... I'm excited to be going. I can't wait to see my dad and stepmom, my sister Molly, her husband Stan and my two nieces, ages 4 and 18 months. Plus Erika, Billy and D are going to be there. Fun! Molly and I have already bought coordinating Christmas jammies for the little girls so we can take unbelievably cute/tacky pictures of them together (consider that your notice that I will be posting these unbelievably cute/tacky pictures after the holidays).
Thinking of Christmas, however, invariably leads me to think about purchasing gifts for everybody. It's a pretty huge and pricey undertaking. In my family, everybody gets everybody else a gift (couple gifts are acceptable, though). Dude and his sibs stopped exchanging gifts a few years ago. Now we just buy gifts for each other's kids. But even so, there are twenty-one family members for whom I need to purchase gifts. This does not include Dude, Belly and Buggy. Let's say that I spend $25 per person, that's $525 + Dude + my kids = more than I can afford. SERIOUSLY. How did the holidays get so effing expensive? My family (the side that is my mom and her kids) is considering starting a new tradition next year wherein we each purchase one cool gift that anyone would be happy to have and then play a game to dole out the gifts. I'm assuming we'll still do gifts for all the kids, but this seems like an extremely reasonable solution to the high cost of adult gift giving. Anyone have other suggestions? Keep in mind that my family's Christmas is all about food and family (meaning, no religious activities or observances involved that would take the place of tearing open a mountain of gifts in about 8.7 seconds flat).
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There is,of course, the "draw one name" experience. But that can be B-O-R-I-N-G... so, you can sass it up with THEMED CHRISTMAS GIFTS! Hawaiian, Winter Wear, Things you can sing to (or with)... you're creative, you get the idea. People get drawn into the gifts to see who gave the most creative, etc. You kind of get so pulled into it that you forget you only drew one name.
Our family stopped doing the "each gets a Christmas" gift long ago. We tried the draw name cards but then we all ended up giving each other gift cards. Now we play a fun game with cards. Everyone buys 1 gender neutral gift with a spending limit.. $20, $50 whatever and then wraps it. We all pile the gifts up. You need 2 decks of cards. One deck you deal 3 cards to each person. The second deck you call the cards. Whoever has the card, picks a gift from the pile or steals from someone else ( you can't open until the end). Everyone has 3 tries. The best part about this game is the guessing. YOu're trying to guess what's in the gift by choosing this one or that. So the more misleading the wrapped gift, the more fun. There is lots of stealing and giggling! At the end everyone has a fun gift and we all got to play a fun game... but then there was one year where dad ended up with the Hannah Montana game. Luckily someone was willing to swap:)
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