I totally value handmade gifts over expensive ones any day. The blanket you lovingly handstitched for me is the bees knees and is by far my favourite gift of all. I treasure it and love wrapping myself up in it every day.

I dont know what we’re going to do this year about christmas and T’s birthday extravaganza since we wont have the space in our RV for all that junk or even a tiny bit of it. Maybe we can encourage the relatives to club together to get the family a gift that we can actually use as part of the trip in some way. It might even spark off a new tradition that Laurie could get into every year. Oh I long for a breakthrough in somehow getting our message across to some of the most obsessive gift givers in the family.

But back then I only had one mom/one dad. Now, with our own chillun who’s got, literally, three grandmothers and grandfathers, [and that’s only counting those in the US 🙂 ], who live 80 miles away from eachother and all vying for his company, it’s just no fun to do Xmas anymore. Not to mention that the endless piles of plastic shit and ugly sweaters or knick knacks that we end up with, Xmas is more of a loading up on the garbage holiday than anything else.

I really enjoyed, this year, the handmade gifts that a few people gave me. I’d rather get one handmade gift from only one person every year than anything else. There should at least be a “do not gift” list registry that you could sign up for. 🙂