A "Helpful" Gift Giving Guide

For the last several Christmases, I've used a little rhyme to help guide me in the purchasing of gifts for my big girls.

Something you want,
Something you need.
Something to wear,
Something to read.
Something homemade,
A game to be played.

Please feel free to nominate me for Poet Laureate of Austin.

The girls make their wish lists according to the categories in the poem and they get six gifts each from Ryan and I, aka Santa Claus.

This year, we're changing things up.  There are a couple of reasons for this.

One, I must admit the homemade something always stresses me out just a little bit.  I'm not really a crafty person, though I would like to be one.  

Actually, that's not true at all.  I think that free time means time spent doing nothing that amounts to anything.  

If at the end of my free time session, I have a beautifully decorated photo album or a knitted scarf or a hand sewn apron or a one of a kind piece of jewelry, then I was not having free time at all.  I was working.  And working is not how I want to spend my free time.  

So I don't want to be a crafty person.

  

There.  I said it.

Secondly, our whole family has fallen in love with the people of Guatemala so the bulk of our spending will be donated to our adopted village there, Pueblo Modelo.  We're thinking of buying livestock and I have to admit, it's pretty fun choosing between chickens, cattle, goats....  a whole new kind of Christmas list. We'll also be contributing to a multi-purpose center we're hoping to build in the near future.

Anyway, that means our little rhyme has to be modified for only two gifts per big girl.  This year's version goes a little something like this:

Something you need,
Something to wear.
That's all you're getting,
Please do not swear.

What do you think?

I'm thinking of seeking a publisher - I feel a book of poetry might be in my future.