We moved to our new home in June and I am very excited to have our first Christmas here! My dad passed away last year and we went to Minnesota while my mother went to my brother's house to spend the holidays. This year I am having everyone here. It will be my family of four, my brother's family of four, my mother, my uncle and maybe his girlfriend. I love to cook and our new house is big and great for entertaining. My problem is what to do about gifts. Dh and I decided several years ago that within our family we will each buy a gift for each other (which makes 3 gifts each) plus the girls get a gift from Santa and get their stockings filled. That is what we will do on Christmas day. However I don't have a plan set for when my family comes. My girls do not need a bunch of stuff nor do my brothers kids. My neices other set of grandparents and millionaires and they all vacation on a regular basis in places like Hawaii and Europe. My family is nothing like that. We are just simple middle class people and I can't afford to buy my neices the expensive gifts they are used to. I really just dont want to deal with a bunch of gift giving on that day. How can I approach this with my sister in law? If the kids were to exchange something small that would be ok. I just don't want it to be where we are spending all kinds of money on crap none of the girls need just for the sake of girft giving. At the same time I think a small gift of some sort is fine, something actually thought out and given just for that person, NOT gift cards. I hate them for gifts at Christmas. It is so unpersonal and I bet anythign if we do give gifts that is what my neices will want. My girls are 7 & 14, my brother's girls are 16 & 19. What I'd really like is to have everyone over for a nice dinner, fire in the fireplace, Christmas music playing and everyone just visiting and having a nice time without the pressure of gifts. Now I know my mother will give uss ALL gifts - she gives us money ever year and that is fine. I am mainly talking about gifts between my brother's fmaily and mine. Can someone please give me some advice on how to approach this issue?
I'm with you. How many of them will actually be STAYING at your house? But you really need to give SOMETHING to the cousins. I've been trying to encourage Carl's family to do a gift exchange among the kids. Put all the kids' names in a hat, and each kid pulls a name and gets a present for that person. Everyone GIVES one, everyone GETS one. But we're dealing with a lot more than just two.
Jackie I had thought about maybe having my girls together give a seperate gift to each cousin and having the cousins together give a seperate gift to each of my girls. That way each child gets one gift. Does that sound reasonable? And how on Earth do I ask my sis in law about it? I'm not sure yet but I think my brother, his wife and both their girls will stay here one night.
HAve you ever given the cousins gifts before? If not, I don't think you are obligated to give now. If you WANT to do a smal exchange ask if you can for a $5 gift swap. I've heard of people being VERYcreative with $5. We don't have many 1st cousins in our family (I have all the kids. , so we do still buy gifts. My sister has wanted to do away with it, but wants me to be the one to voice it. That's not happening- the one with 4 kids saying she doesn't want to buy for 2-- NO WAY. I'd never live it down. Unless someone else says to stop, we'll keep buying small gifts. I hate gift cards, too! I do buy them for one of my sisters, because she complains about any other gift.
What my family (mom's side) has done is....at first when we kids were younger the aunts and uncles would buy 1 gift for each child but not for adults. Then as we got older the adults exchanged names and we kids exchanged names. A $25 limit was put on the kids and I don't know about the adults....lol I am still considered a "kid" at 37.
When will your kids open gifts from you? When will the cousins be opening gifts from their parents? Will they be staying with you on Christmas Eve? Are we talking ON Christmas or Christmas Eve, or another day sometime in that general timeframe? Yes, I think a gift from the girls to the girls would work, or even one gift for EACH girl wouldn't be unreasonable. There doesn't need to be one gift from each girl to each girl, PLUS a gift from you to each girl. That's getting a bit crazy. As far as your sister goes, tell her you are on a BUDGET for Christmas, and how would she feel about the girlS giving a gift to the girlS?
How about just one nice gift that both girls would enjoy? Or draw names? What we started doing was, on Thanksgiving day, everyone who wanted to would write their name and one adjective down on a piece of paper, then we would draw names. We wouldn't tell anyone whose name we got until Christmas day. We put a price limit on the gift. The adjective would just be one word of something you would want. The person that drew your name would have know idea what you wanted so it would just be fun to guess and see what each other got. We got lots of laughs out of it and stress relief. Did that make any sense?
We have started a new tradition of an ornament exchange. We try to find ornaments that reflect the interests of each of the kids. The first year we decorated a fancy box for each to keep their ornaments in and explained that these would go with them when they are grown up. They loved decorating their boxes and enjoy shopping for the perfect ornaments.
That's a neat idea and it made me think of one that one of my friends does. They exchange charms for charm braclets. The charm also reflects the interest of each girl. The only time they get a new charm is at Christmas from their cousins, that way it didn't get to over wheleming.
The part in bold is what we've always done. Yes is it CRAZY! They have WAY more money than we do and their girls are accustomed to REALLY nice things. I do NOT want to do anything like that this year. I am not sure yet when they will be here but it won't be Christmas Eve. We have our traditions on that night which include church and then driving around looking at lights then back home for hot cocoa and then my girls get to open one gift which is always an ornament. My brother's family goes with his inlaws to a country club. Yes we have always bought gifts for the neices. Always. Ok well not last year because we went out of state. I think I am going to just tell my sister in law that we are on a budget and none of any of the girls really NEED anything so can we please just do ONE gift per girl and it can be from the whole family to that girl. I have really enjoyed buying my girls a new ornament each year. By the time they are grown they will have many ornaments to decorate their own family trees with.
I don't know if this would help - but in our family (I have 5 brothers and sisters - and there are 14 grandchildren) we do a Pollyanna with the cousins so we don't have to buy 14 presents - only 3. And for the adults we do the "gift game" where we each contribute a gift worth around $25. They all go into a pile and we play a game where you can steal from someone or take from the pile. It gets VERY funny sometimes. In the last years my oldest niece and nephew joined the adult pile because they're MUCH older. It works well for us. It still gets pricy ($25 present for each my husband and I, and a $25 present for 3 nieces/nephews) BUT...that's IT. You could also do a "family " present for your Brother's family - a game, or video or food basket or something. Another thing to consider is how far are they traveling to get to you....will taking stuff home be a hinderance? This year even my parents are considering joining in the gift game - I want them too because it would me we wouldn't have to buy them a gift too! LOL
Oh Krista we used to play that game! It was so much fun! We played it when we used to have huge get togethers with my mothers entire family. My brother's family is only an hour away and their daughter in college is about 3 hours away. I'm thinking now that we will just do one gift to each girl and perhaps one for my brother and sisinlaw together.
Krista, we had 11 grandkids on one side of the family, and 17 on the other, so I hear you!!! Both had the majority of the siblings out of town. So with Dad's family, only the cousins that showed up got presents from aunts and uncles. We simply didn't buy for my cousins. With Mom's family, we did the exchange. We had two kids in our family, we bought two presents, and were responsible for making sure they got to the right family by Christmas. If anyone was "coming home", the presents were sent go G'ma's house to open on Christmas Eve. So my brother and I always had a card from G'ma and G'pa with money in it (buyig presents for 17 grandkids was a bit much for them!), and a present each from whichever cousin drew our name. BTW, when I started hs'ing, I found a Landmark biography on my shelf that still had a note from my cousin!
