Simplifying...

So I have been really trying to be better at this since having Hannah.  I want to simplify things.  There are many things I've done that successfully with, but Christmas has been one of those things I want to take back to simple.  It's hard!  It's hard to fight against everything that tells you Christmas has to be a certain way...that gifts reign supreme and getting wins out.  This year I feel like we're getting closer to getting farther away from that idea.

 I want to make the birthdays a larger celebration of the girls and their life and how blessed we are to have them both in our lives.  I would like that to be our largest gift giving time of the year, a time to focus on the individual who's bithday it is.  Which brings me to Christmas.  Christ's birth.  Christmas, I want to be about family and good friends.  I want it to be about moments and being together and doing things as a family.  I want it to be about slowing down and taking a good look at the year behind us, and the year ahead.  I want to be able to focus on baking together and reading stories and not rushing from store to store trying to find the perfect gift for the girl's or each other or for whoever.
 Adam and I haven't done gifts for each other for Christmas for quite awhile.  The focus has been on others and now the girls.  But I would really love to find one way each Christmas to devote some time or resources to someone else in need.  Another person, another family...I want to teach the girls about humbleness and servanthood, I don't want them growing up feeling entitled to everything they see.  I want them to be thankful and grateful for what they are currently blessed with and feel anything outside of that is a great bonus, an incredible blessing.  I want them to grow up knowing how to place others first and to think of others who are less fortunate.
 So this year there's been a few gifts I made for the two of them together and then mostly a few things that will fit in their stockings.  It helps they have wonderful family members that help out with things they really need or may want.  We have always been so blessed by how both of our families give to these girls.  It just seems like sometimes there's so much energy wasted on rushing place to place in an already busy season to find gifts or to feel like our Christmas tree is sufficiently stocked and stuffed.  I don't want to be the mad, crazy woman who's shopping last minute store to store, I want to be the mom home reading stories and watching movies with my kids, or taking a fun trip somewhere all together in the season and enjoying what's around me.  After all these people around me, this family, are gifts I've been given, something I've been blessed with beyond measure.  And while it's understandable that as parents we want to shower our kids and our families with everything they could ever wish and hope for, I believe it's also so important to foster simplicity in life.  I believe it's just as important to give the gifts of learned humbleness and a love of giving, a want of doing things for others.  I want to foster a servants heart and a spirit of giving.

So we will have to see in years to come how well I do at this.  :)  It seems like it's getting easier and easier to phase out the least important things and focus more on what really makes this family tick and come together.