Saturday, January 17, 2009

Big Families and Santa Claus

(I promise I'll quit beating the dead Christmas horse after this post!)

Whew. I got all the Christmas presents wrapped by 6:45 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

This year we put a limit on the number of presents (5 for each kid, and Santa has no problem giving a used gift if it’s something the kid will enjoy) and I tried to keep the cost the same for each kid (except the baby, who wants for nothing, so she got some cheaper gifts).

My sister-in-law just puts out all the gifts from Santa the night before UNWRAPPED, which sounds brilliant to me, but my husband won’t go for it. Of course, they also have buttloads of gifts for their kids from THEM. I guess nobody wants their kid thinking they didn’t get them a gift, but I don’t personally do this.

In case you’re wondering where we hide all 20 presents plus stockings, I’ll tell you. This year the “stockings” were plastic lap trays from Michael’s with “pockets” on either side of the tray. I put stuff in the pockets, like crafts, gum, a huge Hershey’s chocolate bar (I am the Sugar Mama, after all), Hannah Montana lip gloss for Callie, a ball and bath toys for the baby, rubber stamps and other junk. I stacked the lap trays and hid them in a corner of the basement, then covered it with Aron’s sleeping bag.

The smaller wrapped toys fit nicely in the huge cooler. The rest we put in the emptied-out Christmas tree box (what will we do next year when we have a live tree???), mostly stackable box-type gifts. Then I closed the box and stood it on end, opening to the wall.

For those of you with large families, I’m dying to know how you do the Santa thing (or if you even do it at all).

2 comments:

  1. Hi! We set a limit at 6 gifts from Santa for each child (he gives the most wanted gift and 5 smaller, usually very inexpensive gifts, things that they would like but never really thought about) and we give them each 5 things. Our 5 things include clothing and essentials, this year that included sheets and a comforter for my oldest. we give one toy usually.

    Stockings are from Santa in our house and he gives toys, crafts (Michael's dollar things), lip gloss, cards, etc. This year Santa did give 4 "family" gifts-2 board games and 2 Wii games.

    Everything is wrapped. We always use wrapping paper with Santa from Santa to remind ourselves not to use it! Most years we have two trees and Santa leaves his things under one and we use the other for our gifts. This year we only had one.

    So, that is how we do the Santa thing-I pray that we are able to keep it up for a few more years for our 7 year old! It breaks my heart to think that she will not beleive soon!!

    Aimee
    journalofamomma.blogspot.com

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  2. Santa gives the kids one present each. It's always wrapped in special paper so it stands out. And for Aimee My daughter is 11 and still believes in Santa. We love watching the norad Santa trip on line until bedtime.

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