Wow, we feel very blessed, but at the same time a little ashamed…
Christmas is an awesome time of year if for nothing else, than for the “spirit of the season” that you can sense in most people. People you run into tend to be a little more friendly and cheerful. You’ll always have your Scrooges, but they seem to be fewer & farther between this time of year.
We woke up Christmas morning to open our presents to each other (Thomas, Melisa, Taven, Bradey). We decided we’re not going to “over-commercialize” Christmas in our house. We got 1 main gift for the boys, and had a rather low $$ limit on our presents to between Melisa & me. It made things a little more personal and made us really think about what the other person would enjoy. I got Melisa a digital photo frame & a gift card to Hobby Lobby, and she got me a Superman T-Shirt (because, after-all, that is my secret identity… Awe Crud! I guess it’s not so secret anymore…) and a new wallet because mine was literally falling apart.
Taven got a cool new Aqua-doodle and Bradey got a cool new teething giraffe (all natural rubber, organic paint, etc…) I also snuck in a few different Matchbox cars for Taven. My & his favorite being the Trash Truck!
We spent the rest of the day at my parents’ house opening way too many gifts! Don’t get me wrong! It was awesome & we love every bit of it, we just weren’t expecting so much!
Taven didn’t know what to do with all the gifts… He just wanted to play with the first one he opened (a large truck with rubber tires). As we put more gifts in front of him, he just kept asking for his truck.
Bradey didn’t know what was going on, so he juct chewed on whatever we put in front of him (including the wads of gift wrap that landed near him.)
We spent Saturday @ the Hodge House with Melisa’s parents and her sister’s family. Another great day, Taven still just wanted to play with the first toy he unwrapped. Logan was there to push all the unopened presents in front of Taven to get everything unwrapped. It was kind of amusing to see how excited Logan was for Taven’s new toys. I guess Taven will be that excited in the next few years as he really starts to realize what’s going on.
We crashed on Sunday and tried to take care of getting things cleaned up & straightened up. We had fallen behind on laundry & keeping up with the kitchen this week because Melisa and the boys have both been sick for a little over a week. It appears to be a random viral thing that just ran it’s course & I think they’re all pretty much in the trailing end of the battle, but it’s been a tough week.
Back to my opening statement… Why would we feel ashamed? I guess I’m looking around at our American society and seeing how we blend in a little too much. I don’t really know the point I’m getting at, other than to say I want to be more of a “stranger & alien” in this town. I want to stand out as a family that has something different about them. I feel “dirty” for commercializing the celebration of Christ’s birth so much. Maybe dirty istn’ the right word, but it’s the closest I can come up with… I’m not sure what I’m going to do about all this, I just know I have a lot to think about.
I suppose I’ll leave you with these thoughts/questions…
- What is Christmas to you?
- Why do you celebrate? (is it because you’re told to by stores & advertising?)
- How do you celebrate?
- What kind of traditions do you do to keep your focus on “the reason for the season”?
The day before, we celebrated Christmas with the Hodge & Choate families… Logan got a neat little wired, remote controlled Wall-E robot that motors around with his head twitching and arms flailing about. I’m sure the motion was simply meant to make him more animated, but it ended up making him look like a freakish little zombie robot. Anyhow, Taven thought it was really cool & even enjoyed making him move around… Unless it was headed straight for him. Then Taven got a little freaked out & would run as far away as fast as he could saying “no! no!” in that sweet little scared voice of his. You wanted to laugh & cry for him all at the same time.
