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!
Digital Ramblings 
Christmas giving
The Adopt-a-Family programs around the country are terrific; Austin has the Christmas Bureau. Even if you aren’t able to adopt a family for the holidays (in Austin, it means gifts for the little people or the elderly, and providing either the elements of a Holiday meal or a gift card for a local supermarket so they can get the food), you can give the gift of time at the Christmas Bureau, etc. They can always use extra hands at this time of year.
If your town doesn’t have such an organization, there’s always the New York Times Foundation’s Neediest Cases Fund (reachable at http://www.nytimes.com/neediest). The stories there – and the stories of giving that have changed peoples’ lives – are truly amazing.
Rob
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