17 Shopping Days Left

And I have yet to start. Yikes. Never fear, Amazon is here! Internet shopping was the greatest invention for moms of young children. Or, the elderly. Or those who work over 50 hours a week. Heck, internet shopping is perfect for everyone who hates shopping malls. I have just about everything picked out, and placed in my shopping cart. Ahhh. All that is missing from the experience is the trip to the overprice-mall-coffee shop and one of those salted pretzels. Oh, and those mall-cookies are sometimes good too.

I still have to tackle the children, but for them I take a minimalist approach. They're each going to get one "biggish" thing, and a set of books. NO VIDEO GAMES. Since I homeschool, and since homeschooling takes dramatically less time that traditional schooling, my kids have a lot of extra time, and nothing puts me in a worse mood than watching them play some game all day long.

Not to go off on a tangent (but I'm going to) - Last summer, I would take the whole gang for a walk, or a bike ride, around the neighborhood ... and we would go for blocks and blocks w/o seeing a single child. NONE. where have all the children gone? Sadly, I feared they were all inside ... playing video games. I couldn't prove it, since I didn't go barging in and investigate for myself. But, they had to be somewhere, and they weren't outside. You tell me where they were.

Regardless ... I might be wrong. They might have all been inside reading a book. OR, maybe they were all walking at the same time, and they were on another block? But, I'm going to do what I can to discourage the practice in my house, and there will be no video games given this Christmas. Bah. Humbug.