Christmas shopping? Check.

Yep. All the Christmas shopping is done. Here comes the bad part....the rest are handmade gifts. Santa is just dying to come out of the closet at our house. All of our gifts are homemade and then Santa just inconsiderately (yes, he has a few kids on his list) buys all of his. I can't wait until the day where handmade can be extended to all of the gifts!

We keep things very simple at our house when it comes to gifts. All of the kids get a santa present (probably $25 or less), a pair of pj's and one present from us. Their stockings are filled with fun and inexpensive stuff. We started this after Rachel's first Christmas was pretty over the top, back when I didn't know that we would end up with six girls to give presents to. All I have to say now is "phew!". Can you imagine 6 x $100 presents? The real reason though? I don't like Christmas being wrapped up in get, get, get. I like the girls to be anchored and practical and as much as I am constantly fighting myself on this, I like to keep it simple. That and...how do we expect them to focus on the Christ's birth if we are focusing on presents the whole time?

What the girls asked for? So sweet.

Rachel: Something girly.

Autumn: a watch and a good book

Chloe: a cute outfit

Hannah: secretly asked for the giant horse at costco that I told her Santa could not fit in his sleigh OR our house. (it took 20 minutes to get her to tell me what she asked for because she was being sneaky....)

Elise: a Daisy train and a big percy (which I don't think exists so we are settling for daisy that I plan on finding SOMEWHERE over the next month)

Aren't those sweet things to ask for? What good girls. (minus the sneaky giant horse request. how many giant horses do we need in our house?)