Holy cow we are less then two weeks to Christmas and I have done zero shopping! I also have no idea what to get people :(. I suck. Am I the only one that finds that as an adult I love the Christmas season and tradition but find the shopping thing a huge pain? Don’t get me wrong I love shopping but not so much for other people. I never know what to get them and I feel like whatever I do get them isn’t what they wanted. I feel the same about birthdays too. I’m a girl that likes to make a list with links to where you can find things at the best price! Of course now that I’m an adult my tastes have gotten a lot more expensive. David has said no to my Christmas list of Canon L lenses more then once :(. I even promised to be extra good but when he found out the price of one lens his answer went from No to Hell No! Of course his list isn’t any better, he wants a new fancy GPS for the boat! I think we both will be learning to love whatever small gifts we get from the other one this year! Actually we talked about it the other night and I think we are literally going to buy each other toys for Christmas. Yes something to play with on Christmas day!
It’s a funny tradition my Dad started a long time ago with my sister and me. My mom did most of the shopping so he would go out one night (usually Christmas Eve!) and pick out toys for all of us from him. He was pretty good at it too, finding fun stuff for us to play with. I kept that tradition when I met David and he liked it so much he introduced it to his family who now also participate in the toy tradition! David and I are partial to Legos, so much so that we have tubs of them in the closet from the last 6 years worth of Christmases. I think we’ve spent every Christmas Day for the last six years together building something out of Legos. I even sent him small legos to Afghanistan last year so he could keep up the tradition! I think our kids will have a lifetime supply of legos at this rate!
I’ve decided that this year if anyone asks what I want I’m going to tell them a bottle of wine! Whatever their favorite is! See we built these awesome wine cubbies over our cabinets in our kitchen and they are empty :(. They look so sad, they need wine to fill them up! If only David would be that easy and tell me what he wants, ugh he is such a girl when it comes to presents!
When it came to gifts for my 2011 brides I knew just what to get them and I now have a stack of happy little boxes just waiting to be mailed out to their homes! I hope to see lots of photos posted to Facebook of these little babies in their new homes, please tag me if you do it too!
Melissa Arlena is an award winning lifestyle newborn photographer in Charlottesville and Richmond, Virginia who has earned her Master Photographer Certification from NAPCP in maternity, newborn and family photography. Her natural and simple work has been featured in magazines and online blogs worldwide. She has been named Best Maternity and Newborn Photographer in Richmond and Charlottesville, VA in 2024.