Day 351.

Thursday, December 17, 2009.

Wrapping presents is one of my favorite traditions of the holidays. A couple of years ago my family decided to get a bunch of fabric and wrap presents in that instead of having 3 or 4 garbage bags full of crumpled paper at the end of Christmas Day. My mom and Lara were the initiators on this and I never got any (probably cause I didn't ask). Now I do wish I had some, solely for the environmental reason. But, I admittedly LOVE wrapping paper...and cloth is not quite the same to wrap with. So, until I do get cloth...

I am grateful for wrapping presents!

I largely underestimated the interest my kids would take in this task this year. Dylan was my "writing girl" who did the names on some of the packages. And Noah was my "tape boy" who got me almost every last piece of tape I needed to wrap around 20 presents. That's a lot of tape! He enjoyed every moment. He also enjoyed rolling out the huge roll of Frosty the Snowman wrapping paper across the whole family room floor and walking all over it and wrinkling it up. And he enjoyed laying down on the paper and asking me to wrap him up. I started to get mad, and then caught myself and actually halfway did it (being careful to keep the paper nice enough to use again!). Dylan enjoyed whining about how she wanted all of the presents for herself and didn't want to give them away. They both enjoyed using the leftover scraps to wrap up little toys of their own themselves and "play Christmas." And I enjoyed it all...even when I was mildly annoyed and impatient.