christmas memories

We had a nice morning here in the Blah household. Hope everyone has a great day, whatever you are doing.

When I was a kid, we went to 11pm church service. My grandfather would somehow leave church, make it home, put out the gifts, and make it back before anybody noticed he was gone. We grew up believing Santa made an exception and delivered gifts to their house early. With divorced parents, Christmas was always a scramble. One year, we actually SAW Mr. and Mrs. Claus getting into a Model T just two houses down the block. I was older and had outgrown the Santa story but I recall even the adults scratching their heads, that year.

My step-father's family had a fun tradition that I would love to revive if we had family nearby to participate. My step-grandparents would travel around and buy little odd shaped items throughout the year. (This was in the time before kitchen gadget stores or fun specialty shops were in every town. There wasn't an HGTV or Food channel.) They would remove all the packaging. Something like this:


or this:




wouldn't have been as well known as they are now. Usually the gadgets were smaller than these. The adults would take turns guessing the items purpose and have a great time making things up. I'd find better examples, but I have the big kid breathing down my neck to get on www.webkinz.com. You get the idea though, right?

new year's resolution

When I started this blog, the big kid had recently entered private school. In reading past entries, I can see I came off as a little whiny about money. We chose to send the big kid to private school for many good reasons. As a result, our leisure spending was cut. Nobody is any worse for it. We're probably better.

I kept last year's resolution. Be more frugal with our money. We turned of the time wasting cable and have all survived. We got rid of the pointless land-line telephone. I started clipping coupons and paying attention to sales. We asked ourselves if we really needed X, Y, or Z before purchasing. We picked up some fun things here and there. The kids are well fed, dressed, and exercised.

So, this year's resolution is to be more frugal with our time. Those coupons and sales I've come to love can be passed up if they aren't a true, slick deal. Getting papers, clipping coupons, browsing deal sites, flipping through weekly ads, and driving store to store enabled me donate large quantities to charities and single sailors. I will miss that. With the Baron deploying soon, I need to focus on time spent with the kids. Plus, if I home school, we won't have that pesky private school expense.