Everyone that provided us with a list is getting what they asked for, and everyone else was at the mercy of my "it seemed like a good idea at the time" method of Christmas shopping. Kids over the age of 10 get a gift card taped to a giant candy bar; my DOH keeps asking for a Nerf gun (even though I'm the only person in the house for him to terrorize), but I don't even bother trying to guess what actual kids want anymore.
My grandmother is the absolute worst to shop for because she simply buys anything she wants or even thinks she *might* want. Every surface in her home and office is piled high with catalogues, so it's rare that you can find something she hasn't already seen. She loves the old windmills on some of her farms, and there's a local artist that does some very neat, very stark
rural landscapes, so we had one of his windmill prints framed for her, and I've already found a place in the office to hang it. Also, the man that used to care for her saltwater tank stopped doing cleanings recently, so we're going to sneak into the office later this week, clean the tank, and put in some new live rocks and fish (I've got instructions on the cleaning and asked which fish are ok to add so no old favorites go belly up or get eaten). Christmas morning we're taking her to the movies too; with her gifts, "doing" usually turns out better than "buying."
Mo's dad is hard to buy for too. He's a hunter, but not a very successful one, and he likes to try different things, so we're giving him a meat box (how fancy does that sound?). I'm getting a couple kinds of venison that can be sized for individual meals from my father, then we're getting him some buffalo meat from a local farm, individually wrapped filet mignons and some alligator jerky. I'm keeping my eyes peeled for other stuff to add before we see him on Thursday.
Then there's my 1 1/2 year old nephew. He's the only baby in the family right now, so he has everything a baby could want and then some. I've been trying to convince the rest of the family to open a savings account/college fund for him that we could give to every holiday, but no luck so far. My sister lives much closer to him, so I feel heavily disadvantaged in the race to become the "favorite" aunt. He loves the movie Cars, and Mo's grandmother works in the legal dept for Disney, so she sent us an oversized framed promo poster that we're going to give him for his bedroom. I'm feeling pretty smug about that since it's not something you can get in the store. Plus he should be even more "aware" by the time the sequel comes out next year. (I'll probably bring a Plan B gift along too in case he's not impressed by something he can't play with.)
On a side note, when my siblings and I had all first gone out on our own, our mom gave us care packages just like the one Marty mentioned, and at first I was like - "Laundry detergent? Aspirin? Thirty-six rolls of toilet paper?!" - but after a month of not running out of anything I was feeling pretty grateful toward dear old mom. An economy sized pack of toilet paper is definitely the gift that keeps on giving when you're young and broke.
