Christmas tends to make me feel rather reflective, I think part of it is hanging all the ornaments on the tree from Christmases past.  They all bring back some memory and then those memories poke other memories and pretty soon a person (okay me) has spent the last hour daydreaming.

 

Thinking more about gifts and ones that are remembered years later...

 

Unfortunately our oldest daughter has a memorable Christmas for a crummy reason. With 4 daughters to buy for, I tended to pick things up throughout the year if the occasion presented itself. A good idea, right? Well it would be if I had taken some time to list who I had gotten for and what I had gotten them, or noticed how many boxes were labeled for each child. Unfortunately that one Christmas, she got the short end of the present stack, and even worse, her dad and I had planned a funny surprise for her. Tired of loaning her my fingernail clippers we had gotten her a pair and to be "hilarious" we had put them in a HUGE box with tons of tissue paper. Well, her sisters had made quite the haul that year for what ever reason and she had a few small things, then came this big box. Yes, you may guess how disappointed she was with those clippers when her sisters all had clothes and toys and such and she had a pathetically small pile in front of her and a lousy pair of fingernail clippers. We both learned some lessons that year. I learned to make a list of each gift as I bought it and she learned that mom will overcompensate in a personal shopping trip to make up for the mistake! We had a mother daughter trip to Maurice's that January.