A Christmas Idea

[twinsmomkatie]

All the "girls" in our family go out to a play or a concert each year together instead of buying each other gifts. This will be our 5th year, and it is AWESOME! We look forward to it all year, have so much fun planning it, and just LOVE being together instead of getting a gift we probably won't use / love for a long time.

My daughters will be 4 this year, and we are aiming to include them when they're 6 . . . they're excited already!

Once we all spent the night together away in a hotel after our play, and this year we are going on a train ride with Scrooge in Boston!

It's a fun way to eliminate junk, focus on family, create memories, and reduce stress. We all love each other, but don't usually hang around together much since we are all just SOOOO different (these are my in-laws I'm talking about) though we DO live local to each other. So it also eases some "guilt" for not spending all tons of time together during the year . . . this is easy!

[L2S2C]

that is a great idea.

[Bunny]

My MILs family does that. The men all go out for a nice steak dinner & a cigar (even though none of them smoke. The 9 of them share one ) I think it's a great idea!

[Erin318]

That is WAY better than lotion and candles! Maybe I'll see if MIL and SIL want to do that.

[Melissa~BHS]

Great idea!
Last year we had the opportunity to go to Disney in Florida for a week. Our hotel (condo) was a gift from my parents. They also paid for my family to go to Disney for a day. We just had to come up with food, gas to get there, and incidentals. Right after Christmas we knew that would be a stretch. So, we cut WAY back on our material gifts to the kids, and created a scavenger hunt for them on Christmas morning. They had a clue under the tree and each clue led them to a different item and another clue. For example, one clue led them to a bag of oranges (which my kids love) and it said "you will be taking a trip". By the end of the hunt they had all figured out that we were going on a big family vacation to Florida in 4 weeks - and they each had a few little items that related to that trip. We also had some gifts under the tree for them, but they were perfectly OK with receiving less under the tree and then taking that trip a few weeks later. We used that $$ to purchase tickets to Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure for the week. We had an awesome time and in fact we are doing it again this year. We've already told the kids that we are going back to Florida after Christmas, and they are already planning the trip.