Gifts
7/23/1
Aisai bought her mother�s Christmas gift today and is about to burst to tell her. Ha!
I�m pleased with the purchase, I guess. It�s not something you can get usually, but we did have to pay more than the traditional amount of around $20 for her Christmas gift.
Aisai�s side of the family draws names at Christmas, mine doesn�t. My side consists of my mom, dad, sister, and nephew. Sis changed the dynamics a few years ago by marrying a conman, but after he really messed her up financially he was gone. Freak.
Well, I am getting only one side of the story, but I always though he was freaky. Heck, he let my sister have him wear a pink tie at their wedding. At the time, I only made whipping sounds [Wha-pssh, wha-pssh], I should have known something was up.
Nephew is from Sis�s previous marriage. He�s 16 now and Sis has gotten him a pickup with over 200 hp so he can put it into a ditch. Nothing like rear wheel drive with no weight over the rear wheels to send an inexperienced driver into a ditch, if not the hospital.
Aisai�s side is more complex. There�s Tom and family, numbering five total. Longwinded has a husband and two kids. And Dinoback has an infant and husband. That�s what�around ten or so?�twelve? Well, I think it�s fourteen with us.
I really can�t be bothered to actually add it up.
See, we draw names. The siblings and their spouses have their names [theoretically] put on pieces of paper and put in a hat. Then names are drawn.
It�s all a lie, I tell you!
Aisai and her mom sit down, with the lists that used to happen from random chance and the engineered ones from previous years, and figure out what hasn�t happened in a while. For a while, we were in a glut where either Dinoback or Tom always had me and I always had Tom or Longwinded�s spouse.
Aisai�s mom doesn�t get in on the draw, since she buys everyone a gift and everyone gets her a gift. All kids get gifts from everyone and kids don�t have to get gifts for anyone.
On my side, we all get each other stuff. And since Sis and Mom and Dad don�t have others to buy for, the amount spend on each other has risen from around the $20 range to near $60 or more each.
Aisai and I have already started Christmas shopping. We obviously got Aisai�s Mom�s gift as well as gifts for the infant/toddlers. Amazon.com sent me a thing saying �Look Clearance! Look Free Shipping!� so Aisai and I blew some cash.
The infant/toddlers that we have are Longwinded�s �G� and �Mac� and Dinoback�s �Ivan�. I don�t remember what we got. I had some input.
The next gift giving thing for Aisai and me is September 10. It will be our 10-year anniversary.
I must say, as some marriage advice, I cannot say that it is the perfect thing to do, since I do miss not having kids yet, but take a decade to just have fun with your spouse. It�s quite nice if you can hit it on a decade with good movies and you have some good restaurants in town. Even if not, which isn�t the case around here, but there was a time we had no money, you can still have a lot of freedom.
Aisai put a $50 cap on gifts for our anniversary. We need to watch the cash outlay since we�re going to be getting her car a major repair soon.
Oh, and the Baton Rouge trip is off. She may still have to go down there to get trained, but I won�t tag along and we won�t stretch it out into a full week.
I got her gifts for our anniversary over a month ago.
Also in September, we have Tom�s 2nd offspring�s birthday, Dad�s, Tom�s 3rd offspring, and Longwinded�s husband�s birthday.
What I want for my anniversary, and you�ll call me crazy, is a mint condition silver Tamagotchi, an arctic silver cover for my Nokia 3390�Oh, maybe a Cross Ion pen�
Oh, the mind just boggles�
I should write about the decorations in my office.