Why try?

Toys. We have toys everywhere. We had to find a solution, so we went to Ikea. Now, I love Ikea. Admittedly, when you buy furniture from Ikea, you have to assemble the 12000 pieces into furniture. It would often be easier to just cut down the tree and hand-carve it into furniture. But, I have a husband. And, although with my husband it is usually a bad idea, the benefit of Ikea is that you save a lot of money having your husband put the pieces together.

Christmas was something my husband and I were dreading. I worked. We are both exhausted. We had to shop and prep. We caught a lot of flack for not having a Christmas tree. Honestly, though, having a Christmas tree with a toddler and cats is just asking for trouble. Our daughter doesn't "get" Christmas yet anyway.

So, we set out on a campaign to rein-in the grandparents. Since our kids are the only grandkids for a number of people, we were worried about the addition of even more toys to what has come to be a giant toy box with a roof. We tried to let everyone know that we would like to keep the gift giving to a reasonable minimum. We didn't want people to overspend and we didn't want more toys that the kids would ignore while trying to chew on or throw our cell phones.

Well, we failed. Spectacularly. And, we made everyone a little unhappy with us for our efforts. Here is the Christmas we got without Jeff and I buying anything:

So, to our crazy amount of stuff, we added a lot of other great stuff. Mind you, we aren't crazy. We like stuff. We like this stuff. We do, however, need a giant shovel. After we dig ourselves out of the collection of stuff taking over our house, we have to take a bunch of stuff to Goodwill. With that, comes the inevitable guilt because someone cared enough to give us some of this stuff and spend good money on it.

We aren't trying to be Grinchy. We just would like to avoid the guilt and the trips to Goodwill. Its nice to be cared for, but we would rather get love than stuff. Seeing that our kids would rather play with people than toys, a little time with people goes a long way. Maybe not as far as the box the stuff came in, but pretty darn far.

Oh, and just in case you're wondering, yes, that's a Snuggie. The blanket with arms. We are truly an American family. You can trust us to keep the world economy going with purchaing stuff.