Something different for Christmas gifts this year

This year Benjamin and I are doing something different with respect to gifts for our families. Like most of your families, gentle readers, our families have everything they need – not to mention a slew of things they want beyond that. Instead of purchasing gifts for them this year we’ve adopted two families that need a little help this holiday season via the Adopt-A-Family program through the Denver Rescue Mission. Each of our families know what we’re doing instead of gifts and we’ve encouraged them to do something similar. The only exception are our nieces and nephews: they will still be getting gifts otherwise we’d surely lose our Favorite Uncle titles!

Last weekend we completed about half the shopping for our families’ gifts and today we finished it. And let me tell you, we are so out of our league shopping for toddlers! One of our families has an 18 month old and the other has an almost-2-year-old who is big for his age. Even when we knew we wanted to get diapers for the 18-month-old we had to ask an associate where they were located in Target. And baby clothes!? Toys?! Thank goodness we get gift guides for our nieces and nephews from their parents!

While Benjamin was busying cooking the pot roast for dinner tonight I was boxing up gifts and wrapping them. With that finished I’m writing this blog entry as Benjamin is putting the finishing touches (ribbons, bows, and name tags) on the presents. They’ll then sit under our tree until December 12th when we deliver them, and uncooked food items, to the families.

Don’t gift less this holiday season, give differently.

PS: Benjamin is now a bow-making fiend after learning how to do it earlier today! Watch out Martha!