Like everybody else, we've been trying to get things ready for Christmas. This is my favorite time of year! It's easy to get stressed out in all the hustle and bustle but I try really hard to avoid that.
Christmas shopping for our kids is actually one of the easier parts--we do it all year long. They are still young enough that we know what they like and they aren't super picky. For example, Selah loves Barbies, and those are everywhere. When I find something on sale that I think the kids would like, I buy it and store it. We have Rubbermaid containers in the top of our closets, so I just toss the toys in there. I love Dirt Cheap, especially when they are having 80-90% off sales. I have also found that Walgreen's stocks a lot of toys before Christmas and marks them down dramatically afterwards.
So that works out well for us. Our kids get a lot of cool stuff and overall we spend very little on it. Amazon is a favorite of ours too. We got in on some pretty good flash deals this year. Great story about that:
Right after Thanksgiving we had placed a couple of orders on Amazon. We had found some good deals on some nice stuff that we were excited about giving to our family. One day we were all at home together and the FedEx truck pulled up outside out house. Brad was in the bedroom working on school stuff, so I was the one who got to go get the packages. The driver pulled out a HUGE box, and I got excited thinking that all of our stuff had somehow shipped all at once. The guy told me it was a little heavy but I assured him I could get it. Honestly, it wasn't as heavy as I expected, considering the size of the box. I hauled that puppy inside and straight to the bedroom so Brad and I could open it together.
"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!" I sang loudly as I dumped the box on our bed. Brad opened it and we both leaned in excitedly. Peering in, we saw this:
That's sixty rolls of Cottonelle, y'all. My ever thrifty husband found a flash sale on TOILET PAPER! He saw the chance and he took it. And it really was a good deal. But I told Brad that if there was a government watch list for yard-rolling, we are probably on it now!
The one exception to the easy shopping for my children was Korban this year. I spent his early Christmas's just wanting him to be able to ask for something. His communication was extremely limited, so it was a huge deal to us when he could actually tell us something that he wanted. He really isn't a picky kid at all and he doesn't ask for much, so you better believe when he says he wants something now we are going to do our best to get it.
The week before Thanksgiving I had taken him for a therapy evaluation in Tupelo. While I was filling out papers and talking to the therapist, Korban noticed a toy sitting on the table. They turned it on so he could see it work and he was completely mesmerized. Since then, all he's talked about was getting a "machine spinner like the one at Longtown" for Christmas. What's a machine spinner, you ask? Good question! I was trying to explain it to people so that they could help me look, browsing therapy catalogues, and Googling like it was my job but none of us were having any luck. The best way I could describe it was a circle inside a circle that lights up and spins. (Longtown had had theirs for awhile and didn't know where it was purchased from.)
I tried to interest Korban in other things. He loves things that spin and/or light up. I tried everything from disco balls to Lava Lamps, but he wasn't having any of it. (Did you know there are lava lamp videos on YouTube? Korban wasn't interested but I thought they were cool!)
So we were feeling a little desperate. Brad asked if I could call the therapist and ask her to text a picture to my phone so he could at least see what we were looking for. I was getting ready to do that when I somehow put the magic combination of words into the Google search bar and found what I was looking for. Behold the Machine Spinner:
Anyway, we were so relieved we found it and Amazon delivered it right to our door. I'm really hoping Korban is excited about it but not so excited that he tears it up or gets overstimulated. We shall see... How about you guys? Have you had any strange gift requests that you had trouble fulfilling? If anyone needs any last-minute toilet paper, we are pretty well stocked. ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment