Next week is Christmas, a time of celebration and gift giving; of sending cards and catching up with old friends.
It’s a time of shopping and wrapping and hiding presents. It’s a time of looking for the perfect tree, dragging it home and spending a whole day decorating it until it glitters.
It’s a time for baking cookies and decorating them. It’s a time to blow your budget on groceries and trinkets.
It’s a time for planning humongous meals and cooking for hours. It’s a time for breaking bread with people you love and drinking eggnog.
It’s a time for running around like a chicken with its head cut off.
Stop!
Slow down!
Wait a minute!
It doesn’t have to be that way.
What if, instead of buying, buying, buying – you gave a gift that no one else can give – the gift of your time.
To your children you could give:
• 8 sessions of playing their favorite game(Make a punch card so they can keep track)
• 3 trips to the movies – and you all sit through the same movie
• A trip to a museum together – not a drop-off / pick up trip, but an actual walk-through-the-exhibits-together-talking trip
• A scrapbook and a couple hours each month to help your child fill it with pictures and keepsakes from the year
To your spouse or partner you could give:
• A foot massage once a month (Can you say aaaaahhhhhhhh?)• A special dinner that you prepared complete with candles, wine and your best dinnerware
• A rejuvenation weekend where your spouse can spend time doing whatever he/she wants – with no kids,pets or responsibility
• A day road trip, just the two of you doing something you enjoy doing together
It isn’t often a person gets a gift like the ones listed and when they do, it becomes a precious memory. The gift of time is not high-tech or sexy. What you do doesn’t have to cost much. But to the person who receives your gift, it’s priceless.
Please tell me what you think of this blog.
Thanks in advance.
“How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”
~ Dr. Seus
