Christmas is still fun and exciting even though our two "kids" are 18 and 20 years old.

Ladybug, I'm with you. Our kids ar 20, 18 and 17. I still celebrate Christmas as though the were little ones by writing Santa on some of their gifts and they don't complain.

We had our party last night and in addition to my sister from New Orleans being here, the most uplifting parts of the party were the little ones.

I have a little 7 week old great-niece who was here briefly. Everyone was tickled to meet her. She was all decked out in a little black and red velour Christmas outfit. Just precious.

Then my great-nephew who is two was here kissing everyone with his litle fish-face kisses. He was still alive and kicking at midnight. He discovered hos shadow in our driveway and had everyone in tears laughing as he chased it off and on all night. Too cute!

Enjoy the kids. They grow up too fast!

We celebrated hubby's 65th birthday here last night, with his daughter, son, daughter-in-law and almost-5 granddaughter. In amongst Pappy's birthday gifts were a couple of "surprises"...when hubby unwrapped a "Kelly on Pegasus", you should have seen the GD's eyes light up. It's that light and the sheer joy on her face that makes Christmas and birthdays come alive in a brand new way these days. They were fun before she came along, but oh, what wondrous magic she brings into every celebration!

[ December 24, 2005, 11:04 AM: Message edited by: Eagle Heart ]

Dotsie, sounds like you had fun! This year I signed the name Santa on a few of our children's gifts too.

Christmas is still a fun, magical time of year for us here.

One Christmas instead of nametags, I copied photographs of the receivers when they were much younger and taped them to the package. It was a lot of fun. Of course I chose the most embarrassing pictures I could find!

Daisygirl

I hate wrapping and always buy a ton of small gifts to accompany the one nice gift for everyone so I use those large bags. I kind of wad things up in tissue and throw them into the bag. Then I write everyone's name on the bag in big glittered calographied letters.

They look so pretty glittering in the lights of the tree.

The kids all come in excited to see their name and guessing what's in the bags. They seem to like knowing which bag is theirs and talking about it before we open gifts after dinner.

It saves time and has become a tradition that the kids seem to look forward to.

smile

Smile,

I am sooo with you about hating to wrap. Ughhhhh.

Gift bags are a gift to the "wrapping challenged"!

Danita

p.s. isn't it cool have you've taken a challenge and made it something your family looks forward to!!!!

It's just like smile to take a pain in the heck chore and create something fun.

One of the best parts of Christmas for my husband is guessing what's inside the package.

oo -oo- oo, I wish I could have you girls for a class! When I was in my early twenties, I worked for a department store in Bloomington, Illinois. An upscale store in those days and they wrapped for free. So I was taught how to wrap - and FAST!!! I can still make the perfect corners AND a beatiful bow in seconds!!! I'm forever loving this little education and talk about "outcome based" - the outcome has been great for 30 some years! Way better than my statistics classes....

HEY!!!!! Now there's a business in the making......Now let's see, I wonder what I could charge for wrapping classes........

But great job, Smile, making lemonade......

Dotsie, Sam is so into shaking packages and has been all his life, that I put small rocks in boxes with shirts in them. Sometimes pennies. Or put money in a really big box and put ceramic tiles in there too. It has been a game for us for so many years now, that it's a joke all by itself. Shaking the box now means, WHAT is in that box besides the present? Nichole thought this was just hilarious and would start thinking of the things to go into Sam's boxes weeks ahead of time. Funny. She was not a shaker and so it was just she and I thinking of these silly things, but never for HER boxes.....That's a really nice memory you women have just reminded me of ...THANKS. AS always.....

Searcher

BTW, when I read my posts again, I see that I use so many exclamation points. This is really funny because, one time when Sam and I were watching Seinfeld, I made a remark about Kramer and that I tend to get excited about things like Kramer. Sam said, "Mother, YOU ARE Kramer!" LOL, LOL, LOL. I'm thinking it's true.....I even have some of his exaggerated movements....OMG!!!!!

I am a caricature of myself. What does that MEAN????