The sign shouldn’t have surprised me. Walking out of Wal-Mart tonight it nearly slapped me in the head: “20 Shopping Days Left Until Christmas”.
I’ve bought nothing so far.
Not that I don’t know what to get. My youngest two both handed me Toys R Us circulars marked with enough red ink to put small countries in debt. Then tonight, our college freshman daughter sent me the first e-mail I’d gotten from her in months. It was her Christmas list.
*digital camera (cybershot)
*North Face jacket
*Patagonia jacket
*Uggs
*Wallabees
*Mac laptop
the asterisks aren’t my addition, those are the gifts she really really wants or needs. She got both a laptop and digital camera in the last 18 months!
I’ve made a promise to myself that I’m not going to get carried away with gifts this year. I figure the kids will get most of the things they want, but I’m not going to get them any junk. When I went through their toyboxes last week I found dozens of things that were under the tree last year that they either never played with or that broke.
Cameron called this morning to say she found some mp3 players for about $20 and a digital video camera for $30. I told her to put them back on the shelf and walk away. All of the really cheap techno gifts never work the way they’re supposed to. I wasted $ on a digital still camera for Trey last year that came with its own software. We never got it working. Dad gave him another one, nearly identical, for his birthday and we never got it working either.
I think if we cut out the junk and crap we usually buy and only get the good stuff, we’ll save money and they’ll all get things that will still be around come February.
But it’s time to get busy. The next 20 days will fly.