Brown Paper Packages, Tied Up with String.

Do you sometimes find that life sidetracks you in your habits, and sometimes you find the variations those sidetracks bring to your habits somehow make them better?  That is how I felt this morning.  

Over the last several weeks I have been pulling out Caleb’s holiday gifts.  I enjoy this time of year because it’s exciting to know where I tucked things away, consolidating a hiding spot, and revisiting where I was/how I was thinking about him earlier in the year when I got the little things.

Usually, I wait until Christmas Eve, after dinner, and just go on a wrap-fest and then wait until Caleb and the pups go to bed, and then I pull out my gifts, as Santa brought them...like it was done (I think) for me when I was a kid.  Until this year I do not think I realized how somewhat silly that process is.  Like...we spend a lovely traditional dinner together...and then we go hide from each other and wrap our gifts. And right...the night is with love...but also...a few other things.  Caleb loves matchy-matchy wrapped holiday gifts...and he likes them as decorations.  I think I much prefer the idea of getting them wrapped and not having the pending last-minute task of doing it, putting them out for more of Caleb’s aesthetic in decoration, and just cuddling with a feel-good movie after our traditional Christmas Eve dinner.

Oh, and I hate wrapping paper in general...it always seemed so strange to find gorgeous patterned paper just to rip it up.  Last year, I went just to the concept of brown paper packages tied up with strings’, and I sorta fell in love with it.  This year, I went back to it, and adopted more of Caleb’s approach to ‘matchy-matchy’.

This year is a smaller year of gift exchange, he’s got a baker’s dozen of gifts (...again, you will notice my affinity to round things out to the nearest prime number when given the chance).  However, this year I actually feel pretty confident in each of the gifts that have a meaning, purpose, and will be appreciated...and my outside clues for guessing have stepped up in quality this year too.  Overall I am an eager beaver to see him know he was thought of in various ways at various times in the past year; by how these gifts were meant to fit into his life.

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