s/o on Christmas experiences

A friend of the family was going through a messy divorce. Her alcoholic husband had gotten violent to the point where she gave his weapons to my dad to hide because she was worried about her safety. She had been a stay home mom and money was beyond tight. My family bought gifts for her three boys and dropped them off secretly at her house. My brothers even snuck along the garage so as not to set of the motion sensors and swept away their footprints in the snow when they dropped them off. She only realized it was us when she was over and saw the wrapping paper in my sister's room.

Another year, my sister and I made stocking for our family members as a surprise and put candy and little cheap gifts in them (we were just kids so we did our shopping while out with Grandma at the local variety store).

And because it's become a pretty big thing now, I think the threshold of joining up and asking for someone to be with has become much lower.
I would love to invite someone to join our family, but there are so many of us we can barely fit as it is.

The year I vowed never to participate in the family gift exchange in my family. I was told by my brother the family liked Wii games and everyone loved to read. Gave them those gifts and my nephew cried because he was so upset at what he had been given.  I could not care less to give something to my extended family ever again (except my Mom). I don't care about having that same experience again.

Last year, I took my mom to the Oak Ridge Boys concert. Made me so happy to give her an experience for Christmas rather than an item. She likes to go to these things but gets big anxiety if she has to drive in an area with a big population. She's hard to buy material items for too!

My grandmother always did a game that we all looked forward to. She'd buy tons of gifts and then number them. Then we'd choose numbers. If the gift was meant for someone specific, there would be a note on it that said something like 'Sell to Stephanie for 10 cents" (We all had to bring a dollar's worth of change.) Some of the gifts were silly, too--cans of olives, etc. Some of the gifts were coins in rolls. At the end of the game, whomever had the most money left from their original dollar and the coin rolls they'd won, also won a big special present. It was just SO much fun.

my husband usually tries to cancel Xmas at least once during the holiday due to all the arguing btw the kids.

After a few years of trying to create this magical Christmas experience for my family I decided to let that idea go. The first year I stopped trying to control it all everything fell into place and worked itself out beautifully and perfectly. My husband pulled out the tree on his own. My sons decorated it. We had quiet evenings singing Christmas carols and hymns together. Other evenings baking treats. Our weekends were spent visiting different Christmas markets, eating sugared almonds and drinking gluhwein. Since then our Christmas season is stress free and so much more enjoyable. This year will be our first Christmas back Stateside and we have a wedding to attend. A family celebration that'll help ease our missing Germany.

When My husband and I got together it was right before Halloween. We had only been together a week when I moved in with him.... That Christmas we decided to do Christmas stockings only. I bought him a 4 foot Sock and filled it full of romantic stuff we could spend our first Christmas doing and or eating and drinking together. so when it came time to exchange our stockings (This was a few days before Christmas because we were flying to Utah to visit his mom for Christmas that year. I had never met her before.  But that is another story altogether.   So we go to exchange the stockings and I had him his. and he hands me mine. Mine is normal size and it only had 3 things in it. a candy cane, something I can't remember what and a bottle of champagne. The funny thing is as he is unwrapping all his stuff. Yes I wrapped every item I put into the sock. I pull out my bottle of champagne and start laughing. he is like what are you laughing about? I said you'll find out. And a few minutes later he pulls his bottle out. They were the exact same bottle of champagne.  and then he started laughing.  but then after we stopped laughing he took me into the kitchen. and there sat a pile of wrapped gifts as tall as the kitchen cabinets and 4 boxes long. I looked at him and said who's are those. He said yours. I couldn't find a sock big enough to put them in. He had gone out and bought all the kitchen stuff that I had put on the list I was making for the kitchen. We had roommates at the time so all their stuff was in the kitchen and I had sold all my stuff or didn't have it to begin with. The roommates we moving out while we were in Utah so we would be coming home to a pretty empty house and he wanted me to have a coffee pot and the other stuff when we got back from Utah. That made me cry. I knew right then that the right man found me.

We still laugh about that first year.  


I was so nervous about going to his moms. I looked at him one day and asked what happens if she hates me. He said don't worry she won't. I was so nervous because we were suppose to stay with her in her house for 10 days. I didn't want her to hate me. He looked at me and said don't worry she is going to love you and if she doesn't then We will get a hotel room. Well his mom welcomed me with open arms and is was like we had known each other our whole lives. 

Poor husband ended up getting a very bad sinus infection. So bad we took him to the hospital 2 times when we were there. and we had to move his stuff out of his storage unit in to a uhaul so we could drive it home to Oregon. It was a bad week for him but it was nice for his mom and I because we got to spend some alone time with each other.