Harveys At Home - The Harvey Circus » Christmas 2009

Just keep swinging…

Meegan — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:12:21 +0000

For Christmas, Mia and Pa bought the boys a swing set. The Ostenfeld’s bought Reuben his very own swing for little people, and these two boys have swung for miles and miles since Christmas :)

Owen has got the hang of pushing himself, thankfully, so someone just needs to be Chief Reuben Pusher to keep them both laughing all afternoon (that is, every available afternoon that we release them into the outside world that is our back yard) whilst flying through the air.

Fail!!! But it was fun :)

Meegan — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 08:03:45 +0000

Marc just laughed at me on Christmas Eve eve, as I was wrapping the last of the presents for the boys. I completely and totally failed this Christmas. I got sucked in to the Westfield hype, and out the window went my not-so-New-Year’s-Resolution to keep presents to a minimum. Four each, to be exact. Plus Santa’s gift…. That so did not happen!

My biggest problem here?

I love love love Christmas. All that Christmas entails, but since this is a post about gifts, I’ll focus on that specific part of the season. I love selecting, buying (then showing Marc so he’s not entirely clueless as to what we are giving the kids), wrapping, and seeing the tree balanced out with all the pretty things under it’s branches. The only bad bit is the crowds at the shops. But it is kind of part and parcel for the time of year and almost a given if you are going to attempt shopping at a Westfield shopping centre.

Anyway, my point? Just what the title of this post states – I failed. I could not help myself! On a positive note, I did show some self restraint and didn’t buy every single thing that I wanted to for the kids, but I still did not stay within the gift boundaries I had set for myself.

I’ll try again in 2010… You never know, I might be a little more successful. This may be a process of scaling back over a few Christmas’.

You just can’t rush some things ;-)

Lost track!

Meegan — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:13:45 +0000

A little while ago, I told you all about what we are planning for Christmas for the boys, gift-wise this year.

Well. As a pre-Christmas update, I need to tell you all that I have lost track of what presents I have and haven’t bought… I know. Shocking, isn’t it?! Especially considering I only need to remember eight things… Eight. Yep, not many. And not hard, I know. Normally!

Maybe my brain is just a little preoccupied with a baby to meet soon and a move back to the sunshine state??? Probably. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it for now :-)

I can hear you all thinking to yourselves, but didn’t you have a list?! You always have a list! Didn’t you write down what you’ve bought and what you still need to purchase??? And the answer is yes. And I haven’t even packed The List – yet!

BUT.

Here comes my excuse…!

Since we are packing up a whole household and relocating all before Christmas, I hastily wrapped and bundled what presents I had already bought so that Marc’s parents could take them home with them when they stopped in for a visit a just over a week ago. I did this mainly so as the presents would definitely be in Brisbane for Christmas day. Also because knowing our luck, they would be all packed in the one box that happened to go astray, or be put on the wrong load if our stuff has to be split into two loads (which is a possibility, but no big deal for most of our things). So, in my haste to get them all wrapped, tagged and on the move, I forgot to double check The List while I wrapped. And while I can remember most things, I can’t remember all of them… So I have a useless List to go by!

Christmas is going to be full of surprises this year. Even for me! ;-)

To “do” or not to “do”?

Meegan — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:49:21 +0000

Our house is a mess. Slightly organised chaos.

There are soon to be packing boxes all over the place. And more mess, I’m sure.

We aren’t going to be in this house for Christmas.

To be more specific, we don’t know where we are going to be for Christmas.

Usually, I have already got the tree up and decorated, and Marc has started putting the lights up outside.

I am going to assume that we will be in a new house before Christmas.

My kids still need a tree, complete with sparkly, twinkling lights.

I need a tree, complete with sparkly, twinkling lights. I do!

It’s just not Christmas without it.

But.

The putting up of a the beloved tree, spending a good few hours putting the decorations and lights up while trying to get unpacked and settled before the big day?

May not be worth all the effort and hassle for Christmas 2009.

Add into the mix, a one year old who I am 99.99% sure will find some way to destroy the tree and presents that hide underneath it’s branches.

The Harvey’s may need to come round to your house and borrow some Christmas-y-ness to take home with us this year.

I promise we will share more festive cheer next year!

Christmas is looming… But I’ve got a Dandee idea!

Meegan — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:19:24 +0000

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?!