Christmas with Mommy and Daddy

With all our travels approaching we had to decide what was the best way to give Claire her gift from us - a new Car! Sure she's not 16 but she can handle it right?! :)) It was a Cozy Coupe! We decided it would be most difficult to transport with upcoming travels and what torture it would be to give it to her, then say, "Time to leave for a trip!" So we planned it for Sunday afternoon 12/16. We'd spend naptime putting it together (along with the sandbox Big Daddy had shipped to us) and give it to her after nap with plenty of play time. After nap, we started talking to her about why we give gifts to each other at Christmas. We discussed that we give gifts because we love each other and want each other to enjoy the gifts and because God gave us the greatest gift in his Son, to enjoy and for our salvation. That was not the total conversation but you get the gist of how it would go with a 2 year old...in stages and in simple terms...the main theme was that we know each other well enough to know what would make someone happy and what they would enjoy, and we bless them with that...like how God knows us and wants us to enjoy His blessings. This actually has been my Christmas ponderance this year. I usually camp out on one thought/theme for the season and this has been it for me and something I hope to instill in Claire - that is that her behavior does not dictate the gifts we give her. Her behavior might dictate a reward or lack there of but never a gift. Big Daddy gets it too as you can see how much fun she had with her sandbox.