Christmas in the Aire

I don't want any crap about how it's too early for Christmas music. Honestly, if it were a normal year, I might agree with you. But it isn't. It is the first year Tabby is old enough to really GET Christmas and (more importantly, in my book) sing Christmas carols! Wheee!! Tabby loves to sing and so I am taking advantage of this and teaching her Christmas carols. I started off with Jingle Bells and that is going great! She knows the whole chorus and some of the first verse (she loves to chime in with hahahaha!). We have also started learning “Must Be Santa” and “Deck the Halls.” I am trying for “Silent Night” but since it doesn't have a lot of repetition and isn't so jazzy, she doesn't really care for it as much. To recap: she's 2.

I am also starting to figure out gifts for everyone. Money is especially tight right now what with the whole remodel thing, but I have an automatic savings plan thru ING where we deposit a certain amount of $$ each month into a Christmas account, so it is all there when we need it. It's the second year I've done this and I am so glad for it!

Anyhow, Matt and I are obviously not getting each other gifts (we gave the pricey gift of nice-looking-bathroom already), save the ultra-sexy gifts of Smart Wool (for him) and Oral-B electric toothbrush (for me). With the kids being the ages that they are we get lots of bang for the buck as far as toys go. I don't want to get Ben too many toys since he has access to a TON from Tabby and our friend's little ones, but I do want to get him one or two little things and probably a cute outfit. Tabby will be getting a set of Playmobil from us (Santa?) … I'm thinking this one since it's got a house, animals AND a treehouse! She discovered our old Playmobil at my parents' house this past weekend and was a *huge* fan.

I also want to start doing a couple of gifts for them that we will give every year. I want to get them each a book or two for their “permanent collection.” And I also want to make a donation upon their behalf to Heifer International of some sort of animal. I like Heifer because it's something they can easily understand, concrete and Tabby at least can select what we give and we can read about it together. I hope that as they get older, they can figure out where they want to donate money to. I view it as the beginning of lessons in gratitude and perspective.

And of course I have a few crafty projects up my sleeve … I want to do new ornaments for the family with the kids' photos on them, but I'm trying to come up with something new and different and I may fail miserably. If you know of any cute photo-ornament projects, let me know!