Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Story: Christmas Review

by Designing Mom Abby

When I was little, I remember coming downstairs into our living room and seeing, well...magic. It was like everything in my dream had come to life, all sparkly and new, and I usually had to blink before I could believe that
Christmas had treated me so well. It was a little winter wonderland for one perfect morning and I cling to those memories as if they were gold. Now, years later, with my own little nugget to spoil, I had sparkly and new dreams about Christmas morning and everything that it would be.

Needless to say, life got a little bit in the way and it didn't turn out quite as glittery as I had hoped.

We ran out of time, with the business and the baby, and scrambled to get our 8 presents together for our little girl to open on Christmas morning. I even admit to stuffing her stocking with, brace yourself...kleenex. Three packages of kleenex. Yep, it wasn't good. I was pretty much in tears when I was wrapping up the gifts, with our really cheap wrapping paper that might have been the only paper left in all of Target, wondering how in the world my mom and dad held down full time jobs, three kids and cranked out a pretty perfect Christmas year after year.

Well, as it turns out. It's all about perspective. When my daughter toddled into the living room and saw her presents and her stocking with the cute little stuffed dog peaking out from the top, her eyes got wide, her face broke into a HUGE smile and she said what ever parent loves to hear...WOW. Oh and she loved the kleenex. Spent a good hour pulling out each and every one while we enjoyed out coffee.

So, lesson learned. Christmas is magical whether you have 1 gift or 20. Whether you use the expensive wrapping paper or the cheap (which actually tears quite nicely, I might add). For a kid, Christmas will always be as good as it gets. And the gift of champions for Audrey's first legit Larson Family Christmas...a little $22 plastic shopping cart that we found at
Target.

1 comment:

ellyandphil said...

Thank you so much for writing this! I cannot begin to tell you how distraught I was over the fact that Santa (UPS) was late in his delivery and the stockings went empty because I had to use those as presents. I realized in the end I was putting too much pressure on myself because my kids had a great time with their erasers and coloring books. I almost felt like I didn't need to even give the big presents =)

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