Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Works For Me Wednesday~ Christmas shopping

Its time everyone, its only a little over 40 days until Christmas, time to shop!  I think this is my most favorite time of year hands down.  The food the smells the decorations.  The birth of my Savior.  I wanted to share with you how I shop for my children.  First I will tell you that we don't "do" Santa and you can read all about it here, we love the big round guy we just treat him as he is fictional.
Since the kids know the gifts they receive are gifts from us and that it is all a celebration of Jesus and his birth, we want to have them choose wisely.  Its easy this time of year for the kids to tell us they want every single toy that comes on tv.  I understand I want a lot of things I see on tv too!
What we do is right around now the first or second week of November we take the kids to the toy store sometimes together sometimes alone and we have them choose 10-20 toys they think they would really like to have.  At the end of the trip we ask each of them which toy do you want more than any other toy.  There is nothing worse on Christmas morning than opening up the gifts and the kids not really getting at least one thing they really wanted, especially after we have spend so much money.
I have found this to be a great way to get my kids what they really want and they understand that we can't buy everything they want but we love giving to them and to others that's what makes this time of year so special, giving, just as God gave us the greatest gift of all, his son.
We are going to Toys R Us this weekend and I will have my list ready.  I do find that Walmart normally has everything that Toys R Us has and if it's not in the store it is usually on the web site and Walmart does free shipping to the store its called Site to Store, and this has been a great savings to me.
Happy Shopping!  For more WFMW go to Rocks in my Dryer.

6 comments:

littletoesandcheerios said...

Happy Shopping!!
I've got Madi, my mom, Jancie, Andy & Stacy's gifts all done. But there's still a little more to buy.
We are going to have a quite Christmas evening here at our house (just me Madi & Daddy) and have a birthday cake, read some scripture of Jesus' Birth as a new tradition.

Susan said...

Hi - not sure if I have commented on your site before or not. I enjoy reading. We did play the Santa thing when the kids were little BUT it was second to celebrating the birth of Christ and we made sure of that. Now my boys are teens so obviously Santa is just who he is :) I use to do similar as you with shopping but we would wait for the BIG Toys R Us magazine to come in. Usually by now. Their Christmas catalog. We would pour over that and I would take mental notes :)

Happy shopping. With the job loss so horrendous here in Michigan, it will be a much tigher Christmas :)

SEC

Melissa said...

That is a good idea. Our kids go through the toy book, I think every page is marked:)

marky said...

We started Dave Ramsy's financial peace last spring.. Our Christmas is almost complete. Cash only.. well thought out gifts.
Only a few things to finish up. My son and dil will be home for Thanksgiving, so I want to be ready for Christmas and have the chance to enjoy the season without the stress of shopping!

Stephanie Wetzel said...

Thanks for the idea. Mine fill out the toy books too, but it's tough to figure out the top toy when they have 45 things checked off. :)

Growin' With It said...

before ani's bday we did that with both the boys. it was a great idea and i love how sweet they were about it all.