About 5 years ago when we were really struggling financially, I had an a-ha moment.
I realized that the more my kids had, the less they appreciated it.
And that was when we adopted the four gift rule at Christmas.
You know — something you want, something you need, something to wear, and something to read.
In my house, the inverse relationship between stuff and gratitude was illustrated by the story of…
the Robes.
That was a rookie mistake I made that year.
BUT, it also was such a good illustration of how my kids were SO excited to get something that a lot of kids would take for granted.
My kids wore the sh*t out of those robes.
They still do — we still have them!
We still stick to the four gift rule.
Mostly.
There have been times where I’ve gotten more than one something you want gift in the past couple years. But we have scaled WAY back.
And this year I’m making another change.
I like having books in the house.
But my kids really only read a book one time. Not so much the picture books, but definitely the chapter books.
And with my youngest being 8 years old now, there are less and less picture books being read and more and more chapter books.
A couple years ago, Number 4 told me not to get her a book anymore. “It’s a waste of money, Mom,” she said.
She was right.
But I don’t want to give up that something to read gift.
So I figured out what I’m going to do.
It will also help me stay on track with something that I’m way behind on.
Pictures.
I have about 5 years of pictures on my computer and I haven’t done anything with them.
In fact, if a stranger came into my house, they wouldn’t even know that Number 7 existed.
One of my favorite memories of going to my grandmother’s house when I was a kid was looking through her photo albums.
And that got me to thinking.
My kids LOVE to look at old pictures of themselves. They go through photo albums here at home all the time.
A photo book would be the PERFECT book for them. They would look at that over and over and over again!
So this year, each of the kids are going to get photo books. And I’ll finally start doing something with the 5 million pictures I haven’t touched.
My plan is to do this every year. Give them a photo book of the past year. A retrospective. A family yearbook!
They are going to LOVE it. I know it.
And I’m super excited to do this.
I have a feeling it’s gonna be my favorite gift of all to give to them this Christmas.
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