Getting ready for Christmas...one day at a time.

We spent the morning decorating our tree, putting up the ornaments and hanging Christmas things around the house.  Other than a few broken ornaments as we were hanging them, things went relatively well.  After the decorating was a different story!  Matthew somehow thought it would be a good idea to chase his brothers around and throw a glass ornament at them.  This of course resulted in chards of glass ALL over the living room, in blankets, in the carpet, all over the coffee table and stacks of papers.  James of course proceeds to run through the broken glass to tell me resulting in bleeding feet.  Then Matthew began the lying, he didn't do it, nobody did it, the dog did it, Joel did it...blah, blah, blah.  I have to admit this one pushed me over the edge, we had JUST gone through what a pain it is to clean up the broken ornaments when we were decorating the tree. We had JUST gone over the fact that the broken ornaments can hurt somebody.  For goodness sakes you are almost nine years old, don't throw crap!!!!!!! 

Deep breaths momma, deep breaths.......

Ok onto our gift giving this year.  I am not going overboard this year.  For the first few years the boys were home I bought tons of stuff, partly because it was fun and partly because of the guilt factor of all the crappy Christmases they had before me.  However, they don't take care of their stuff, they don't appreciate anything, and it just ends up being a total waste.  This year I am only buying four things each:  Something they Want, Something they Need, Something to Wear, and Something to Read.

Something they Want:  I told them I was only buying one fun present/toy each.  Surprisingly so far they have been totally fine with it, maybe it will hit them on Christmas, but I'm sure they will get tons of fun stuff from my family.  They each have put in their requests.  Matthew wants a new Nintendo DS, but this would be his 5th DS in three years.  I happened to have found the extended warranty I purchased on his last one, so I just shipped it off to be fixed for him...shhhh, don't tell him!  I will be "giving" it to him for Christmas with the new Pokémon X game I bought at GameStop (It was used so I saved 20 bucks and the man shrink wrapped it for me so it looks new!) and the Pokémon 'skin' to put on his DS.  James wanted BeyBlade stuff which I had found a bunch of on clearance last summer and Joel wanted drums, so I ordered a VTech drumset off Amazon.

Something they Need:  There really isn't anything the boys "need", so I decided to get them lessons/memberships for this category.  Matthew is getting a family Zoo Membership, James is getting a online subscription to ABC Mouse, and Joel is getting ice skating lessons.

Something to Wear:  I hit up Gap's Black Friday sale of 50% off everything and got Matthew a new sweatshirt and James and Joel got new super hero sweaters.

Something to Read:  I have been on the look out for really nice hard cover new or like new books at goodwill.  You cant beat it at .50 a book!!  I have found some REALLY nice classic new hardcover books for each of the boys this year.  I even found a couple of series of books for Matthew that he has been wanting.  I splurged and bought the new Diary of a Wimpy kid book for Matthew.  He has been reading like crazy lately and that makes a momma proud!

Christmas Eve we always get new pajamas and a movie and of course there will be the stockings on Christmas morning.  This year I have some dollar store items and will be getting gift cards for fast food places for the stockings.

Now I just have to stick to my guns and not buy all the good deals I see :)