A few years ago, I volunteered to “play Santa” for Ryan’s work Christmas party.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 They had Santa come, and gave a personalized gift to each child who attended.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 To prepare, they asked the employees to suggest a toy or let them know an interest of each child.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 There was a $10 budget for each gift.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I LOVED doing this.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I shopped sales, did price matching, one day sales, etc.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 And this wasn’t online shopping, either (the shipping would have eaten up my budget), it was shopping in an actual store.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 John was a baby, and sometimes I took him and Jenna with me while the others were at school.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes I had a babysitter.<\/p>\n
Some of the gifts I remember were bionicles (they had a buy one get one free deal, so I stocked up on those for little boy’s gifts), furreal pets, the Dogz, Barbies,\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 and model cars.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 The older kids were harder to shop for, especially when there was nothing listed as interests, so they got jewelry boxes, CD’s or even a gift card or two to Barnes and Noble (Cole’s favorite gift that year, I think).\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I had so much fun shopping for other people’s kids with other people’s money.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I think I even told someone that I should be a “Christmas shopper” and do people’s shopping for them.<\/p>\n
How much has changed in a few short years.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Black Friday shopping?\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 No thanks.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Shop for other people who I don’t even KNOW?\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t think so.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Shop for needless toys for my kids that will just get broken or be the cause of fighting on Christmas day?\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Count me out.<\/p>\n
What has happened to me?\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I used to LOVE the thrill of Christmas shopping!\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Finding that perfect gift was a thrill for me.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I still want to find the perfect gift, but I’d like to find it at 50% off with free shipping and have the nice men in brown deliver it for me.<\/p>\n
I guess my life has gotten busier in the last three years.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, being in the bell choir and having almost every night in December be busy with rehearsals or concerts does take away that urge to shop.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Having kids who are also involved in choirs and bands and dance and therefore fill up every remaining available night with their concerts, recitals and rehearsals also takes the thrill out of going out there and fighting the crowds.<\/p>\n
I’m not worried.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I’m sure I’ll get my “shop back”.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Sometime.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 But for now, I’m relieved that my presents are all bought. Really.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 All bought.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s not even December 1st.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Yay for me!\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I’m sure I’ll find a few more last minute things and remember something that I have forgotten, but for the most part I’ve got the shopping done. \u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve gotten a few things on line, and picked up a bunch of stuff early.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Not wrapped, yet, unfortunately.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll work on that soon, but since I don’t yet have the tree up there would be nowhere to put those presents…yet.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I’m going to work on that today.<\/p>\n
But I’m happy that since Thanksgiving was so early this year, we have one more week to get ready for Christmas.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 To do all those fun things we want to do to enjoy the season.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 And getting the gifts done and out of the way early just frees me up to not have to worry about those details.<\/p>\n
How about you?\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Are you a shopper?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few years ago, I volunteered to “play Santa” for Ryan’s work Christmas party.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 They had Santa come, and gave a personalized gift to each child who attended.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 To prepare, they asked the employees to suggest a toy or let them know an interest of each child.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 There was a $10 budget for each gift.\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}