Giving at Christmas time

I am very big at giving at Christmas time.. I wish someone would hand me a loaded gift card and I would buy gifts for so many and not think of my family at all. Does that sound crummy? I love to give especially little kids I don't think would have Christmas otherwise. That little boy Billy in the Polar Express hits home with me. I have been in a bad circumstance growing up I remember living in the managers office of a hotel and I think there was probably lots of time my mother couldn't afford Christmas or didn't save for Christmas. Then as I have said in recent blogs I became a ward of the state and it felt like a Norman Rockwell painting. She would try to get me my hearts desire as long as it was decent. I mean nothing that was a fad or too expensive.. Sometimes she would say I wasn't responsible enough. Sometimes I got a gift I had wished for when I was 13 when I was 17. Sometimes she gave me the same Christmas card multiple years in a row.

Then I married Adam and Adam and I were doing it on our own for a time. We got a real tree because it had been a long time since I had a real tree. Serious as can be we decorated it with Adam's old Star Wars figures and beanie babies.. Either the stuffed animals or our 30 lbs lab puppy killed that tree haha. I have got to look for a picture I thought I had of our first Christmas as adults.

Then after he passed of course I was alone with Skylar and I was on welfare working at the shoe store and my boyfriend was working at the carpet mills. The only gifts I had for Skylar were three donated by a local thrift store.. The only tree I had was 1 foot tall and it was a gift from a person I met online.. Skylar was small and doesn't remember that year. That year we received a help from Salvation Army.

Now I make it a point for my kids to pick out a gift to put in the Toys for Tots box to give to another.. I make it a point to put coins in a can. I make it a point when I am able to adopt an angel off of a tree.. Sometimes people in my own backyard need help and I do what I can. Not for the notoriety or praise.. really I would just simply label the gift with From Santa.. I just want to put a smile on someones face and a parent to breathe a little and not have to hide tears on Christmas.

I started a tradition of giving a Christmas Tree every year because of that original small tree as well.

This year money has been tight. I have tried to put forth any money toward my best friend's father's funeral expenses, and our own medical bills, so I took an American Girl item out of our gift closet and dropped it into Toys for Tots. I can't imagine what that little girls face will light up when she sees that special box.

To me folks that's what the magic of Christmas is all about