You guys, Christmas 2012 is going down in the record books as one of the best ever. We wished we could have been closer to family but at the same time our innate aloneness creates a special holiday bubble for us to waller around in (how’s that for a southern word?) self-indulgently with no obligations to shape our day.
We started Christmas Eve with a rather spontaneous scavenger hunt. Each Wild Thing was given clues to help them find and open one present.
The prizes were three different video games (courtesy of the Christmas Wishlist) and a season of Andy Griffith (courtesy of a grandma). That pretty much kept them occupied and peaceful for the rest of the day.
Jeremy and I flirted with our new trick of trusting Twelve Year Old with babysitting her brothers for short periods by going on a “date” to the Safeway to use a giftcard that we’d been holding onto for awhile. We bought donuts for Christmas morning and brie as a special treat to yours truly, the cheese nerd, who hadn’t had brie since moving to this fair country. Sigh.
Then I let him show off our new bird scope (thanks bc homeschool money!) at a nearby duck pond. And I took pictures of birds for him, which is pretty much the best Christmas present I could give him.
Behold the majestic mallard.
On Christmas Eve-ning Twelve Year Old and I watched White Christmas while eating brie and sourdough. Epic win.
Before going to bed I set out a Christmas donut for each Wild Thing.
Then I said goodnight to the stack of presents that have been given to us from multiple directions and wondered if the Wild Boys would know to wake us up before opening them.
Cut to 9:00 on Christmas morning when Jeremy and I lazily and naturally awaken from our slumber to find the breakfast donut plus the Christmas Eve video games have worked a Christmas miracle – sleeping in.
I mosey down the stairs to find all of the Wild Things getting along splendidly, with no pressing desire to open presents at all. I think there are at least two reasons for this phenomenon.
- A) We haven’t created a gift-centered Christmas culture in our family. We are relatively gift-less, actually. So the Wild Things don’t expect a big show.
- B) The generous gifts that were given to us this year have been on display for weeks, so it was old news. There was no special set up on Christmas morning arranged just so to show that “Santa” had in fact visited (we’ve also never done Santa).
So in most ways it was just another morning to them. Except with a sweet donut. In fact, they were so unconcerned with the gifts that we still didn’t open them for more than an hour. Which allowed the grown ups to drink a couple of cups of coffee and whatnot.
Around 10:30 I did finally call their attention to the gifts and we all huddled ’round and opened them one at a time. We were given gifts from three distinct sources this year: The blog’s Christmas Wishlist, the grandparents, and our church small group. They did not disappoint.
Everyone was more than pleased with what they got.
We were given too much to list it all, but trust me that it was more than generous and I was surprised in the totally good, Tiny Tim, “God bless us, everyone” kind of way.
Also, Star Wars was apparently the Wild Boy theme this year. Score.
After the gifts were finally all conquered we retreated to our various corners, most of which involved Star Wars.
Putting together a new Star Wars Lego set and playing Star Wars Trouble.
I reveled in my own Christmas gift – a leisurely shower. And then whipped up a breakfast casserole for lunch.
Twelve Year Old and I purtied up our nails with the fingernail polish that someone sent her from our Christmas Wishlist.
And THEN we bundled the Wild Things up and whisked them away to our big surprise -
The Hobbit.
(Not pictured)
By the time we left the theatre it was already dark outside (darn you short winter days) so we headed home to spend the rest of our evening playing with new toys, new books, new games, and new . . . chocolate.
With some more brie thrown in there somewhere.
Best. Christmas. Ever.
What was the best part of your Christmas?
Nice way to spend the holiday! Our family is pretty big, has a pretty routine way of spending the holiday. My favorite part this year (as it is most every year) is catching up with extended family — in particular, my oldest son being there for the bulk of the day, before flying back home to go to work tomorrow was nice.
It’s hard for me to even fathom future holidays with grown Wild Boys. I think I’ll just savor the now for . . . now. :)
I can totally amen the part about it being nice to have kids who don’t rush to gifts. We celebrated with a family get-together last night which ended kind of late and then we decided to watch a Christmas movie together to make it even later.. so the two younger kids (2 and 4) didn’t wake up until around 10:30 and THEN they played and munched quietly with us deciding that they’d wait for their 7 year old brother to wake up before even looking at gifts. Gift opening with us takes a long time. We all watch each gift be opened, so even thought we don’t put a lot under the tree, (we all do make a gift for each other and then there are a few store bought, as well as fun treats in a stocking) it still takes time. But what’s great is that each gift has the giver just as excited as the recipient. (we don’t do santa either. or maybe “we’re all santa”, since sometimes we sign gifts to each other that way to leave us guessing, lol!) By 3pm we finished with gifts. People who called during gift time to wish us well said “Oh I forgot that your kids take forever to open gifts, that must be so annoying for you guys.” Nope. We love every second of it.
Ours didn’t take quite that long but we do prefer the one at a time method, also. I remember growing up it was just a free-for-all with everyone ripping into everything at once and it was just sort of chaotic and the gifts didn’t seem as appreciated.
WOW! Such a blessed Christmas. It sounds so perfect!!!!!!
Aprille recently posted..The best gift of all
It was pretty awesome. :)
Glad you had a nice Christmas, Jessica!
Our best moment was our scavenger hunt. A tradition we abandoned when we came to the Lord because it was something we did during our Pagan Solstice-celebrating. Little things had been said by the girls about missing it and I decided to bring back the tradition, complete with rhyming clues. The smile on Kaya’s face when I handed her the first clue was something I’ll remember for a long time.
I’m also thankful that the girls didn’t get so much – volume wise. A few higher ticket items, like Playmobil RV campers, create less overall mess in the house. In year’s pate, grandparents have overwhelmed us with LOTS of cheaper toys that end up cluttering the house and falling to the wayside within weeks.
I think you mentioning it on Facebook helped to inspire our own hunt! :)
I was impressed with the quality of our gifts this year, especially the ones that our small group provided. There was no skimping on cheapo gifts, everything was top of the line. I know $ doesn’t equal love but it did made me feel particularly special/grateful.
What a beautiful memory! We had much the same thing happen Christmas morning – kids woke up slowly, no one was overly eager to rip into presents (they’d been there for a while, and there wasn’t a ton of them). We took our time, enjoyed it, and then after breakfast everyone disappeared for a couple hours! ha ha Merry Christmas Bowmans!
Merry Christmas to y’all!
LOVE that you don’t do Santa and had the gifts already out–I did the same thing this year. We’ve never done Santa, but I really liked switching to having the gifts out so my kiddo would know what to expect!
I think it’s funny that even as teenage parents we were like, “Nope. Not doing that Santa thing.” Lol.
Have to say, I am pretty amazed how well your kids and – obviously – you treat the whole gift-christmas concept. I think its really rare and worth copying! I was agaisnt this whole christmas-gift-new things-fever and I thought I could escape it but unfortunately grandmas and grandpas and aunts and everyone else didn’t have my back.
Well done! :)