All hail Amazon! Amazon Prime especially. Since my husband became a Prime member I cannot tell you how many times we have decided to forgo the hassle of going to the store to buy something and do it at Amazon instead. Even when we do go to the store we'll check our Amazon pricing by phone while going through the aisles. Since shipping is free with Prime, even if the price is only a little bit lower I may decide to order it instead of get it right then, if I don't have to have the item right away. For instance, Christmas gifts arriving by UPS during the daytime when Gavin is at school rather than when I'm shopping with him is so much more convenient.
In fact, I don't even bother doing the Black Friday shopping anymore. I use to be one of those die hard get up early stand in line people who would have to try my best to get the sale on SOMETHING at a store just because it was the thing to do. Now, that is Sooooo OUT. Amazon it IN. And I am IN on IT.
GAVIN'S SANTA LIST IS DONE!
So today I did a serious inventory of the wish list I had compiled for Gavin on Amazon. Showed him what it had on it and asked him what else he might put on it before he wrote his Santa list. He and I worked on it together. He added a couple of things I had not thought about but for the most part I'd done pretty good at adding all the stuff he'd mentioned to me he might like to have. Then I asked him which ones would he really want and were the most important that would go on Santa's list. He had to come up with the best of the best, of course, because everything could not possibly go on there. Although Gavin knows Santa can't get him everything anyway, Santa has to know he's not greedy, (like his mommy).
The reason I'm putting this here is because Ken and I immediately took the list and became Santa. We whittled the list down to what was acceptable, because the list was still quite long, and then at AMAZON.com under his wish list we clicked "add to shopping cart" for each item we wanted, then checked out. It was that easy. In my last post I worried about what to get him and seriously I had no worries. It was done.
I still have to go outside the house shopping for other people and for Stocking stuffers.
STOCKING STUFFERS
Speaking of stocking stuffers, when I was really young I didn't have a stocking. We had paper bags. In those paper bags we each got one apple, banana, orange and candy bar and a handful of hardshell nuts. no toys. I didn't get a real stocking with a toy or two in it until I was around 8 (still had the other stuff in it too). You see, until then my Mom, Dad and I spent Christmas's with my paternal grandparents. Dad was the oldest of 9 kids and most of the rest were still pretty young when I was little. So stocking stuffers like kids get now were out of the question. When I was 8 or so my Aunt Barb crocheted my cousin and I stockings (big ones). The main reason we got them then is 1. All my dad's brothers and sisters had finally gotten too old for Santa and 2. My brother was 1 so mom and dad decided it was time to have Christmas at our own house now. It was still weird to wake up on Christmas morning at our house instead of Grandmas's for a long time.
What is a stocking anyway? Traditionally I mean? I have very little knowledge of what the traditions of stockings are. I remember the christmas cartoon a long time ago about santa putting gifts in the stockings because the stockings hung over the fireplace to dry. How silly is that? The stuff would make socks just rip then where would kids get new socks that, I'm sure were needed more than toys. And, where on earth did we get the traditions that stocking stuffers had to be toys, or candies or fruit or just whatever they are? I'm sure we get them from our ancestors, just as I did. I know of now one else, for instance, that puts only fruits, a candy bar and some nuts in their kids stocking, assuming they have a stocking instead of a paper bag. It just isn't done. I don't think they would even think of put that stuff in there with the other junk they do. Yet, for some reason, every Christmas, I want to. Whether I do or not, I want to. It just doesn't feel right without them. Because I was so ill informed of this tradition I looked it up and found a few stories about it:
From http://www.worldofchristmas.net/christmas-symbols/stocking.html
In fact, I don't even bother doing the Black Friday shopping anymore. I use to be one of those die hard get up early stand in line people who would have to try my best to get the sale on SOMETHING at a store just because it was the thing to do. Now, that is Sooooo OUT. Amazon it IN. And I am IN on IT.
GAVIN'S SANTA LIST IS DONE!
So today I did a serious inventory of the wish list I had compiled for Gavin on Amazon. Showed him what it had on it and asked him what else he might put on it before he wrote his Santa list. He and I worked on it together. He added a couple of things I had not thought about but for the most part I'd done pretty good at adding all the stuff he'd mentioned to me he might like to have. Then I asked him which ones would he really want and were the most important that would go on Santa's list. He had to come up with the best of the best, of course, because everything could not possibly go on there. Although Gavin knows Santa can't get him everything anyway, Santa has to know he's not greedy, (like his mommy).
The reason I'm putting this here is because Ken and I immediately took the list and became Santa. We whittled the list down to what was acceptable, because the list was still quite long, and then at AMAZON.com under his wish list we clicked "add to shopping cart" for each item we wanted, then checked out. It was that easy. In my last post I worried about what to get him and seriously I had no worries. It was done.
I still have to go outside the house shopping for other people and for Stocking stuffers.
STOCKING STUFFERS
Speaking of stocking stuffers, when I was really young I didn't have a stocking. We had paper bags. In those paper bags we each got one apple, banana, orange and candy bar and a handful of hardshell nuts. no toys. I didn't get a real stocking with a toy or two in it until I was around 8 (still had the other stuff in it too). You see, until then my Mom, Dad and I spent Christmas's with my paternal grandparents. Dad was the oldest of 9 kids and most of the rest were still pretty young when I was little. So stocking stuffers like kids get now were out of the question. When I was 8 or so my Aunt Barb crocheted my cousin and I stockings (big ones). The main reason we got them then is 1. All my dad's brothers and sisters had finally gotten too old for Santa and 2. My brother was 1 so mom and dad decided it was time to have Christmas at our own house now. It was still weird to wake up on Christmas morning at our house instead of Grandmas's for a long time.
What is a stocking anyway? Traditionally I mean? I have very little knowledge of what the traditions of stockings are. I remember the christmas cartoon a long time ago about santa putting gifts in the stockings because the stockings hung over the fireplace to dry. How silly is that? The stuff would make socks just rip then where would kids get new socks that, I'm sure were needed more than toys. And, where on earth did we get the traditions that stocking stuffers had to be toys, or candies or fruit or just whatever they are? I'm sure we get them from our ancestors, just as I did. I know of now one else, for instance, that puts only fruits, a candy bar and some nuts in their kids stocking, assuming they have a stocking instead of a paper bag. It just isn't done. I don't think they would even think of put that stuff in there with the other junk they do. Yet, for some reason, every Christmas, I want to. Whether I do or not, I want to. It just doesn't feel right without them. Because I was so ill informed of this tradition I looked it up and found a few stories about it:
- The tradition of hanging stockings is said to have its roots in the 16th century Dutch tradition, where children in Holland used to leave their clogs by the fireplace filled with straw for the reindeers or donkeys of the Saint and a treat for Santa himself in the house. In return, the Santa Claus used to leave treats for children.
- There is a legend about kind Saint Nicholas related to the tradition of Christmas stockings. Once a kind nobleman had a turn of fate. He lost his money and his wife and was left alone to fend off his old days with three daughters of marriage-able age. Once, when St. Nicholas was going on rounds, he heard all four of them crying together for they had little to eat and make merry. Their biggest problem was how to arrange dowries for the daughters so that they can get married.
The saint knew that these people were too respectable to be offered any charity and so he thought of another way to help them out. He saw that the three daughters had washed their stockings and hung them over their fireplace to dry. So, in the night, he quietly climbed down the chimney and placed three purses of gold in each of the girl's stockings that was enough to marry them off. In the morning, when the family found the money, they were very thankful to God and the kind nobleman who did so much for them. - According to yet another theory, at about the end of the nineteenth century, Thomas Nast and George Webster cooked up a story about a visit from Santa Claus as an illustrator and writer respectively, which became very popular. It was in this story that Christmas stockings were first mentioned as being hung from a chimney, thus, giving birth to the tradition.
From http://www.worldofchristmas.net/christmas-symbols/stocking.html
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