May 15th, to be exact.
I really don't know why it took us so long to open gifts.
Actually, I maybe do know.
We celebrated Christmas with my family during the Christmas Day weekend. The children ripped into their stockings Christmas Day morning (I think) and we thought we would open gifts just a few days later.
Life got in the way. The week after Christmas was spent packing our bags to head to Russia and attempting to keep a mainly cleaned-up house....which I think I can say didn't work very well. I will forever feel bad about the wreck that our flooded-house-cleaner-uppers had to deal with. I worked on bookwork the week before we left and left the piles of papers lounging on the desk. Our second-trip-to-Russia piles were still in Will's room as the suitcases couldn't hold nearly all that I had hoped to drag along. There were also piles on the couch that had been taken out of the suitcases because of the weight issue of the bags. Oh. And the sweeper was sitting in the middle of the living room floor cause I had swept just minutes before our ride showed up to whisk us off to the airport and I didn't have the time to take it to the basement before we left. I never dreamed that other folks would have to clean up the messes for me. Sorry about that, all you who had to clean up after me.
Anyway.
We then thought that maybe we would be able to just open them on Russia Christmas, January 7th. Didn't happen. That's the day our flight left for Moscow.
We came home from Russia and moved into Jason's sister's house while ours was being remodeled after the broken water pipe which resulted in a flood. The gifts were there for us, but frankly? We were just so thrilled to be back 'home' again that the idea of opening gifts didn't even click.
Two weeks after coming 'home' we moved back home for real. You'd think that we would have opened the gifts then, but no. Life was more than busy at that point. We had a new little fella who got into absolutely everything, we had boxes of stuff to unpack, we had routines to re-establish.
Seems like we could have opened them in March. But we didn't.
Then how about April? Why not then? Good question.
We waited til May, and frankly, I was surprised that the children took that long to notice that they had Christmas presents sitting there to be opened.
One evening they started begging to have Christmas....so we did.
They were beyond thrilled.
We read the Christmas story, quizzed the children on what the real meaning of Christmas is, and let them tear into their gifts.
Addie was thrilled with her sewing machine and wanted immediately to make herself a dress. There was only one problem. The foot pedal was missing and still is....so we had to order her a new sewing machine.
Sure, it's a little overkill for a pip-squeak like her, but she was beyond excited to have one like Mommy's. AND....if we can teach our children to treat it nicely, she should have a sewing machine for years to come. We shouldn't have to get her a new one because she outgrew it!!
Really, when I ordered it, I thought it was a little more little-girlish. I was shocked when I pulled it out of the box.
Will was pumped to receive a little tote of garage sale purchased legos. I was, too, as it meant that we didn't spend much on his gift.
Jack loved the tractor and wagon....though it had been opened by his big brother about a month earlier....
So that was our Christmas. In May. Honestly? I kind of liked it.
It seems that the month around Christmas is so extremely busy that the children (and adults, for that matter) forget what Christmas is really about. We start to think that Christmas amounts to the number of gifts that we receive, the number of hours spent with family, the mountains of food heaped on tables.
It's not about all that. It's about our Savior. It's about His birth. It's about everything but the gifts.
Try it sometime. I can't say that we'll ever do it again, the Christmas in May thing, but it was fun.
An unexpected day with gifts.
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