Holiday Gift Giving....

Chris and I in Hawaii!  Isn't he so cute!?!?!

 So when my wonderful, sweet, husband and I decided to get married on January1 - I didn't think of one thing... I know must come up with 3 amazing gift ideas all at one time!  Chris's birthday is the beginning of Dec.  Then we have Christmas and now our anniversary.  At first we said we didn't want combined gifts but now it seems to be how it is working out.  I am actually ok... almost excited about it.

But finding gifts for Chris can be a challenge for a couple of reasons.  First - he never says he wants anything.  If he does want something, he usually just buys it.  So I made him stop buying stuff in September.  Secondly, I must find three awesome gifts.  We are still in the phase of spoiling each other rotten.  And I love it!  We buy each other happies and we love to go bigger and better every gift.  But with three holidays right in the row... I'm nervous.  Third, he has this stupid app on his phone that alerts him to spending on our accounts.  I have the same app but I never pay attention to it because I am normally the one spending money.  Anyway... this app tells him where I buy his gifts.  Thank goodness it doesn't tell him what I buy but it definitely tells him where the money is being spent.  So all three of these things make it very complicated to get him a good, surprise, gift!  I went ahead a bit the bullet on his birthday... well actually I tried to be sneaky and use one of our less often used accounts thinking those alerts wouldn't be at the front of the app.  I was wrong. I got home and he asked what I had bought from the specific store.  I promptly told him nothing and walked away!  Now I only have his Christmas and Anniversary gift.  And that is it's own story.

See I thought I knew what I wanted to get Chris. In fact I had some nice things picked out.  Then one day he came home super excited!  He was acting like a little kid with a secret.  He kept going on and on about how much I was going to love my gift.  He said that he had to stretch his budget a bit and combine my Christmas gift and anniversary gift but he didn't care because I was going to be sooo thrilled with his gift. He just knew he would get voted most awesome husband ever! Then he stops... waits a minute and then asks what our budget is anyway.  Well how exactly am I supposed to answer this question... if I say too low then I wont get my super awesome gift and if I say too high I look awful and greedy.  So I turned it back around on him.  You know that didn't work!  He said he wanted to know my opinion.  So I threw out a number.  And he told me he was thinking more.  So I threw out another number.. .he still didn't like it.  Finally he threw out a number.  And let me tell you - none of my previous gift ideas would work now.  (I am purposefully not writing the ideas here just in case Chris decides to read this blog. I might want to use the ideas later!) Anyway I was completely at a lose for a while.  Then I got the great idea to upgrade our home theater system.  Chris is always talking about needing new speakers - better speakers.  So I went and I picked out this super cool system.  But I was smart.  I came home and measured our space first.  It is a good thing I did because the system would not fit in our TV stand and would make our TV look extremely small and out dated.  After thinking about it I decided that instead of getting him a different sound system than the super awesome one I had picked out I should simply update our home theater system - TV and entertainment center - the whole thing.  Now, I can tell you about it because Chris is way too picky for me to pick this big gift out on my own so he knows about it.  And I know he is excited because even though I told him it was a maybe he has already told all his friends about it.  Kinda funny!  I too am super excited about this gift!  I can't wait to give it to him as a combined Christmas and Anniversary gift.  I will definitely upload some before and after pictures of our set-up.

So Chris and I are all set to give each other gifts for the holidays.  What's funny is we are really good about sticking to budgets for everything and everyone else accept for giving to each other.  I have his big gifts and then a ton of little things to go with them.  Crazy I know.

Sometimes I worry that our priorities should not be on spending so much on each other.  I talk to others and they have much smaller limits and place it all on more sentimental gifts.  But Chris and I are sentimental.  I guess we are just still in the phase where we love to spoil each other.  I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing and I am sure many people could tell me a hundred other things we should be saving for or spending our money on.  But for now... we both do well, tithe well, save well, pay our bills, and travel.  So I guess how we spoil each other rotten is OK.  It does still kinda bother me the way some others act like just because we spend money on each other the way we do it makes our gifts superficial or less emotional.  Trust me!  Chris is emotionally invested in his new big screen TV!


I am not just super pumped about Chris's gift I got him this year.  I am also excited about all the gifts I got my family and friends.  I can't wait for them to open them. Besides spending time with family and friends and holiday baking... I think gift giving is one of my favorite parts of this season.  God sure had the right idea.  He gave us the greatest gift ever!  He even wrapped it! :-)