Christmas Shopping '07

This used to be my most favorite time of year... I used to *love* Christmas shopping! Malls lit up with Christmas decorations, Christmas carols playing nonstop... However, since having kids, it's become much less enjoyable. Malls overcrowded with people = difficulty maneuvering with a stroller (and even worse now that we're double-wide).

Anyway, for the past couple of years, Christmas shopping has become painfully unenjoyable, even stressful. However, this year, I pretty much bought everything online, and it was so, so easy! All we have left are Rich's parents and my sister (gift card). Amazon is literally a godsend. Free Super Saver Shipping and no tax -- how can you beat that?!

Right now, our house looks like the place where all the Amazon packages have come to die. We have stacks of boxes, just delivered over the past couple of days, all containing gifts ready to be wrapped. Incidentally, I *love* wrapping gifts..and am very much looking forward to doing so once again this year. I even considered taking a part-time job at Williams-Sonoma so that I could be that person who wraps gifts in the back. Okay, I know that's weird, but really, that's how much I *love* wrapping gifts.

Oh, by the way, the other thing I love is being able to buy gift cards to pretty much anywhere at the supermarket. How ingenious is that?! It's like one-stop shopping while you're out getting groceries anyway. I do still have to get Maddie's teachers' gifts, so I'll do that the next time I'm at the supermarket. Gift cards, another ingenious invention by retailers. I read somewhere that less than 50% of gift cards purchased are ever redeemed. Isn't that insane?! But I guess most people forget about them or lose them before ever using them. Sad.

We still haven't put up our Christmas tree. We're undecided about whether we're going to do it at all this year. It's so much work bringing everything down from the attic (and worse, when we have to put it all back up). The sad thing is that Maddie might actually enjoy the tree this year. We keep waffling back and forth...but if it doesn't happen this weekend, it won't really make sense to do it at all. Ugh, we're just being lazy. It would be cute to take pictures of the kids in front of the tree though, so maybe we'll do it.