Spoooooooiled!

I'm not gonna lie.
Brad and I TOTALLY and COMPLETELY spoiled our kids this Christmas. We bought everything they asked for. (Fortunately they didn't ask for a car or anything that was truly out of budget) I don't know who was more excited for Christmas morning, the kids or Brad and I. And admittedly, it is WAY more fun to give gifts to kids than adults. They just get all giddy and don't care about being proper or adult-like. I love that. And I don't feel bad one bit about doing it either. Our kids deserved to be spoiled. They're good kids. And we deserved to do it. Our kids have had Christmases in the past where they got nothing because we couldn't afford even one thing. They've had lean Christmases too where they all just got what they got from Grandparents (thank goodness for them) and that was all. Of course, our kids never cared, but as a parent, it's heartbreaking to spend Christmas morning staring at a tree with nothing under it or to know that your kids were aching for a particular thing that you couldn't in any way afford to give them.
So we bought everything they asked for and some things they didn't ask for but we knew they'd like. And our kids did most of the Christmas shopping. We let them buy things for each other rather than all the gifts being from us. It was so sweet to hear them tell each other thank-you and give hugs and have Novan say, "thank-you so much Beya! I love you!" when he opened up his Laserbeak transformer. The moments when your kids get along so beautifully are such a blessing.

We didn't really spend any money on anything else for Christmas. We still used the same 3 foot fiber optic tree we've used every year since we got married. We used the same fake holly flowers and homemade Christmas ornaments from our nieces and nephews that we received years ago, the same set of glass ornaments my college friend Kelsey gave us the year we were married... although there are about half as many due to breakages over the years with 4 kids. The only thing we DID spend a little extra money on was our Christmas dinner. We're all meat snobby and there isn't anywhere to buy free-range anything here in ND (unless you want to buy a half a cow) so I ordered a duck online for our Christmas dinner.

One of the things I love about this ward that we live in now is how everyone doesn't care much for proper etiquette and trying to leave some kind of false good impression. We go over to our friends' the Clarks many Sundays for dinner and no one puts on some kind of dinner party show. There are no fancy deserts and Kami Clark doesn't go out of her way to make a fancy dinner. When Brad invited the Thorntons over to our house for Christmas dinner, I didn't know they would then extend the invitation to another family without telling me or that Brad had also invited one of the men in our ward who lives and works in Williston but who's family lives in AZ. I don't stress about stuff like that. I just figure out a way to make it work because nobody really cares if your duck is too small to feed that many people. Everyone was just happy to chip in. Fortunately though, I had also ordered some massive free-range ribeyes along with the duck for Brad for a Christmas present so we had duck AND ribeye steak for Christmas dinner along with all the other Christmas dinnery type things. I had wanted to make a bunch of yummy deserts and maybe some homemade rolls on Christmas eve for the following day but we were out of town most of the week at my Grandma's funeral and didn't arrive back in town until Saturday night, late late. No worries. Tiffany Thornton had already forseen this and picked up some pies from the store for the occasion. It all just kind of came together. We were with friends and we got to spoil our kids and it was WONDERFUL! My favorite Christmas ever probably. Brad likes to say that money doesn't solve all your problems but it solves all the ones that are caused by not having any. =) And we finally have money, so we spent some of it on my favorite holiday. And we remembered Christ. And every day we reminded the kids of why we celebrate Christmas. And we were so grateful to be here in North Dakota. To have a good job. And to have good friends and a supportive family.
Merry Christmas!