Activity Advent Calendar: Day 5- Shopping for thoughtful gifts

A beautiful tradition of Christmas is sharing gifts with people we love. Our kids exchange names with their cousins in Ohio and Tori was expressing to me earlier in the season how she wanted to pick her OWN gifts for her cousin. Admittedly, I am a bit of a control freak and like to have a say in what they are choosing, but I am learning to (big breath)...let go. ;) This Saturday as part of our Activity Advent Calendar we embarked on a new adventure and visited the Midtown Global Market in Minneapolis to shop for our cousins. They were having a Craft-O-Rama with all kinds of vendors selling homemade crafts and gifts. The first challenge in shopping with children, or maybe with shopping in general, is fighting the desire to look for one's self. As the girls and I shuffled through the very crowded fair, they were all too eager to choose trinkets for themselves and a little less eager to shop for cousins. Shopping for ourselves would not have communicated the message I was hoping to get across this day. :( But then, and I love when this happens, Tori spotted the perfect little treasure for her cousin Mikayla. She showed it to me waiting for my thumbs up or thumbs down on her find. Now, it is nothing spectacular, and I can't tell you what it is exactly, but Mikayla will like it. And in that instant, our time at the Craft-O-Rama became far more enjoyable and the much more valuable lesson was learned. Once the girls had tasted success in finding something thoughtful for another person, they became eager to find more things for the other people on their list. Truly it is far better to give than to receive. Merry Christmas!


p.s. Most of our Advent days we have been reading books or baking for someone....today we started building our own Nativity...stay tuned. :)