Through my addiction to numerous blogs and my friendly Google reader, I have stumbled across this Christmas gift giving idea from Dandee for the kids.  The idea you can read about in detail here, and the subsequent post is titled, Want.Need.Wear. Read. I love the idea!  So much so that we are going to try it on for size this year.  Our kids do get spoilt by our families and close friends, and really they don’t need all that extra ‘stuff’ that we end up buying each year.

Christmas 2008 is a great example of this present overload – in all the excitement of the present frenzy at Marc’s parents house we didn’t even see what Owen received and from whom it came (I just hope he thanked people)!  And that stash of wonderful things and stuff didn’t include any of the gifts we had bought for him, they were all still waiting under the tree, for when we made the trip back home from Brisbane.

And then once we were home and had time to open what was left under the tree, it just wasn’t as exciting, for anyone…

I think we were all a little gifted out by then!

So basically, instead of going crazy at Christmas time with the gift thing (like  most parents tend to do, and we are definitely guilty of  this in Christmas’ past), there are four gifts per child from the parents.  Yep, just four.  Sounds too easy, right?!  I’ll use Owen as the guinea pig  for our Christmas ’09 example (with his permission, of course!):

One gift the child wants – For Owen this one is super easy, he trawls through the toy sale catalogues until I throw them out, sometimes taking them to bed with him as his night time reading!!!

One thing the child needs – This year for Owen I am thinking that might be a new pair of Crocs or Havaianas for his ever growing feet, but something else might crop up between now and Christmas.  This is probably the only one out of the four that I will buy much closer to Christmas.

One gift to wear – Growth spurts for both boys make this again an easy task.  Our wear gift will be an outfit (shorts and a T-shirt, or a set of PJs).

One something to read – too easy (maybe)!  We love love love books here at the Harvey’s, and the hardest part for this one will be sticking to only one book per child!!

Plus a surprise from Santa (you can’t leave him out of all the fun!).

AND THAT’S IT!

How much simpler could Christmas be?!