My Birthday

Growing up, on our birthdays and at Christmas my sister and I received many, many gifts from our parents. We weren't the kind of family that bought clothes or other things here and there throughout the year. That's what these special occasions were for...to give us new clothes, toys, jewelry, games or whatever else you can imagine. Birthdays weren't about big parties or groups of friends to celebrate, they were low-key, just our family kind-of-days with a special dinner, dessert and lots and lots of gifts :).

Sometimes habits in early family life can distort one's perspective when marrying and finding out your spouse had a completely different experience. Now that we've waded through our first year of birthdays and Christmas, it was time to reevaluate. 

My sister has adopted a three gift rule for Christmas gifts for her family. Jesus received three gifts at his birth, gold, frankincense and myrrh, so it seemed a suitable choice as a guideline for her family. Having five children, it's also practical! 

Leading up to my birthday this year, I mentioned to Matt that I thought going with three gifts would be a good idea. The rest of the year he just keeps telling me to buy whatever I need. For me, it's hard to buy things for myself as I go since I'm not contributing to the family income. Buying things for him is easy. It's time I begin to adjust to that and learn to buy "what I need" as I go (can't risk going crazy like I did when I had my own income in single life :). 

When I sat down to make my birthday list, it was actually easier than I thought. I wanted one thing for the house, one pair of shoes, one set of DVDs and one piece of technology. Ok, so I put 4 things on the list. Then, I added a Bible study I'm interested in reading. Even still, I don't expect to receive all of it. He may have his own ideas about what he'd like to give me. I just want to keep things simple for my sweet hates-to-shop husband. I included internet sites for each item, specific descriptions and prices so he'd have confidence as he sought out any items on my list. 

Let me just say, this has taken the pressure off. I can give him good direction for buying for me and I can focus on a few things for him. We together can keep things tighter during a time of year when we have many other family birthdays and Christmas for which to buy gifts. 

Since Matt and I are big on quality time, a night out for dinner and/or a day trip during the month will round out the experience for us. I love building memories with Matt. 

I must admit that my Christmas list is almost finished as of Sunday night. 

Here's the birthday stack, hee hee: