Saturday, December 12, 2009

Red Envelope # 12 +extra!

Today's Red envelope was watching a Holiday movie together. Plus we had a "surprise" visit from one of Santa's helpers. Savanna looked outside and saw that there were pj's on the porch!


What a surprise!! The kids kept asking and wondering when the "santa jammies"would get dropped off. And it finally happened tonight! Perfect timing for watching a movie together dontcha think?



When we lived in Oregon, Santa started delivering jammies to us on Christmas Eve- they would magically appear out of nowhere, just in time to get ready for bed... I think it must have been from hanging around our friends the Barnetts so much. They always got "Santa jammies" delivered on Christmas Eve, and Santa must have figured we were part of their family so why not go ahead and keep the tradition going with the Spear family. After we moved to Oklahoma, Santa continued to drop off jammies on Christmas Eve. But a strange thing happened when we moved to the house we are in now. The jammies came early. As early as Thanksgiving weekend some years. I think that Santa new how much this mommy doesn't like waiting for surprises. Plus isn't it more fun to get to see the kids all tubbed and scrubbed and snugged in their cute jammies throughout all the holidays?! I think so.

4 comments:

Kristie said...

Here is where I confess how uptight I am. None of my kids really wear pajamas. The girls sleep in t-shirts ... Kellen sometimes in a t-shirt, sometimes in fleece pants ... but none of them really wear pajamas any more. Yet we still get matching pajama sets for them to wear on Christmas Eve JUST SO I can take a picture of them, and so they can be matching on Christmas morning. And no way could we re use the pajamas from last year, even if they still fit, because then it would look not as cute. This year, as I paid my $45 at Target for pajamas I know they will only wear one time, I hesitated. Really? $45? And I used to pay more than that, when they were little and I insisted on buying matching Hanna Andersson pajamas .... that they will only wear one time? But the scrapbooker in me won out over the cheapskate, and yes, they now have pajamas for this year, too. :)

Kristie said...

PS. I've been wondering about your red envelope tradition .... do you have the evelopes prepared ahead of time and draw randomly each day? Or do you have it scheduled what will be in each envelope?

Alisa said...

Kristie- I hope we always get Santa jammies. I look at jams all year and think ... hmm I hope Santa brings those for Jack, or I hope that he will bring those cute matching ones for Luke and Tucker. I have recognized sometimes there are clearance tags from the previous years sales. Sometimes even Jay or I will get Santa Jammies, but thats every few years. (My mom has even gotten them one year!)
It sounds like Santa should go shop your house every year for your hand-me-down jammies! (wink)

Oh the Red Envelope- I have a mental list of ideas, and then some things that are already on the calendar. I have a stack of red envelopes in a drawer (that I have picked up on clearance, or this year from Lori's store) and just plain paper. (I think I will try and get some cute paper for next year, but I did not let, not having something cute keep me from doing the red envelopes.) Every morning around breakfast time I write it down and we rotate who gets to open it. There have been a few that we did not have time to do before school so we open it when the kids get home or at dinner. Sometimes I have things planned out that I want to do on certain days, and like I said a mental list of things that we want to do every year (going to look at lights, getting out the kids Christmas trees, drinking hot chocolate and reading stories) and somedays I am thinking ... what would be fun for today? What would be something that we can all do together, or that would help bring us JOY during this month?
I enjoy doing this tradition, and the family really enjoys the anticipation of what will be in the envelope today- which is fun for the kids who think they are grown up. (wow- that was a long answer!)

April said...

I love this idea! It is so simple! I have always had the image of the "perfect" advent calendar and it is always too time consuming for me to make or too expensive to buy. I think that I will pick up some red envelopes tomorrow. There is still plenty of time to count down.

Thanks for all of your great ideas!