Preparing for Christams

One thing about with kids is that there are usually already too many toys around-and then we give them more. This is a great time of year to go through old toys with our kids and have them select ones they no longer play with to donate. If your kids are old enough, this is great to do with them to help them understand about those less fortunate, about how fortunate they are, about the joy of giving, and about sharing. An added benefit is the space it clears for the new things they will be getting for the holidays.

When I was a child, we had 2 trees in the house-1 for the living/family room, 1 for the kids. The main tree had some glass ornaments and we could not touch. Our tree had only non-breakable ornaments, was about 2 feet tall, and we could decorate it ourselves. I'm sure it never looked like a decorator had been involved, but we sure enjoyed it. I've usually had 2 trees as well. Lately however, I'm back to just the smaller tree. Now I have lots of extra ornaments to pass on to the rest of the family. I have quite a collection, as usually each year we got a special new ornament with the date on it. These are great memories to pass on through the family.