Buying guilt Legos
I have no idea what to get my kids for Christmas. They already have so many bloody toys that they often “rediscover” toys that they haven’t played with in a while. And now, because of the tradition of the holiday, I have to find more stuff that I hope they’ll play with. Truth is, they’re happy with Legos and the free video games on pbskids.org. But I don’t know if i have the strength to cut back, because I’m so afraid of them being disappointed on Christmas morning. I’m thinking maybe I’ll get lots of small presents, because the real joy on Christmas morning at their age is quantity, not quality. Our living room may become even more crowded, but I can probably live with that. And then we’ll do a big purge over Christmas break.
There aren’t many places for a coat-tent in the cinema these days.
We went to see Wreck-It Ralph yesterday. I loved it. I’ll talk more about the writing in a future post, because I really feel they did a great job, but I wanted to share the neat discovery we made. At first, we sat in the first few rows of the stadium seating, but for some reason they had the volume cranked so loud, my son was holding his hands over his ears. So we moved all the way to the back row, which was awesome. We had the row to ourselves, and there was a space a few feet deep between us and the next row, so we had room to move around if we needed to without bothering anybody. Since my 5 year old tends to get scared in movies once the plot thickens in Act 2, I was able to cover him in coats so he could hide (and peek out). I did have to actually cover his mouth a few times, since he has trouble remembering to keep his comments quiet when he gets excited, but then, during the end credits, he turned to me and asked, “Are you ready to dance, mommy?” Thanks to that extra space, we could rock out.
Attempting to Stream.
We’ve also (finally) discovered Downton Abbey. In order to watch it for free, we’re doing kind of a convoluted setup in which I’m streaming it from Amazon Prime and then using our Apple TV to mirror my MacBook Air to our television. It’s not perfect, to be honest, and we may end up just buying it through iTunes and watching it straight from the Apple TV. This whole new way of watching TV with Netflix and Roku and Hulu and everything still confuses me. There’s not really one place I can go to get everything, is there?
Anyway, loving Downton Abbey. Serious dress envy, accent envy, house envy, butler envy, and everything else envy. And Harriet Jones!
Thanks to gravity, I must find new ways to look pensive.
I tripped on a ball and fell down on Wednesday. I tried to draw on the six weeks of martial arts training I had in high school and do a cool ninja break-fall, but my elbow wound up meeting the floor a little more enthusiastically than I’d’ve liked. I’m sadly discovering that I’m at the age where falling down is a big event that takes a few days to recover from. And I’m also discovering exactly how many times I lean on my elbow in an average day.
Mary Mascari 
Trust me dear, you are not alone in the sad discovery that gravity works all too well. And while I can’t speak to the streaming thing, I can relate to everything else. Downtown Abbey will be back for the next season in January!
January? I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Blast. 🙂
I’ve been thinking the same thing about toys. Might just hit the dollar store for Christmas this year.
I try to make a big deal out of donating toys to the needy – but yeah – guilt legos – when we already have a scary amount – is a very familiar sounding tale.
Something else to consider for Christmas traditions: Have the kids pick out a charity – or just go with Heifer International – and let the kids pick out what animal they are going to “buy” as a gift for someone else. Next bit: On Boxing Day, we each pick 1-3 toys that we don’t play with as much anymore, and we are all going together to donate to a charity/shelter for kids who don’t have much for Christmas – and get the boys really involved in it, beyond just the “drat, which toys do I have to get rid of” part. Make it joyful for them. I think kids are a lot more empathetic than we give them credit for sometimes – and it’ll not only help them to understand how blessed they are in their lives, but that to do for others is like sharing their blessings with others – spreading the Joy.
Those are some great ideas. Totally gonna steal it. 🙂
If you have an Xbox you might find that you can do a lot of your streaming from there directly to your TV. Also a lot of the new TVs and dvd players can do streaming directly to them. Our TV at home does hulu, netflix and a few others – but sadly not Amazon. We recently bought ourselves a Blu-ray player and I told Evan the one thing it had to do besides play blu-rays was stream from Amazon.
Between our Apple TV, our Wii, our TiVo, our Blu-ray player, and our TV, we have 5 ways to get Netflix, which seems excessive. :). Especially since we don’t have a subscription.