Christmas gift giving is usually for giving those highly wanted but not always practical gifts. But as we get older, these gift giving times tend to become the best time to get those practical gifts. I bring this up to explain one of my gifts to Karl.
Karl has this love of very soft, plushy towels. He has commented over the past couple years on how "un-plushy" the towels we received from our wedding have become; it has been nearly 13 years. The children got a few new towels when we moved into the house on account of their new decorating scheme of underwater fish in bright colors; perfect for a child's bathroom. Karl upon feeling the new towels, renewed his thought of our still nice but not as luxurious towels. So, I got him two full sets of new plushy towels that I took great care in wrapping between layers of tissue paper to give it an extra flourish. I was giggling so hard I am surprised I got the picture in focus.
Sometimes when you have been married to someone for a while, you get over the surprise factor in gifts or as many women have come to understand, if you want him to give you the right book, movie, etc. you need to make the request very specific! In such cases as this, I sometimes go so far as to buy the items myself and hand Karl the unopened amazon box with the comment "Thank you honey for the gift! Would you like to wrap it so you know what it is?" While some are offended at this normal exchange between us, it has come from many years of understanding, he unusually does not have the time and would feel better if he knew it was really what I wanted.
I also received my own copies of two versions of Pride and Prejudice movies, the Kira Knightly and the Colin Firth. This has come to be distinguished in this house as the two hour verses the 5 1/2 hour versions. I love both movies for different reasons. The first for the scenery, the more romantic moments, and the more true to my view of the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, Jane, Caroline Bingly, Charlotte, and I do like Kira as Lizzy. I love Donald Sutherland as Mr. Bennet. He is able to capture the satirical teasing motivated by love without coming across as cynical. The A&E version with Colin Firth, the best Darcy, the closeness to the book, the attention to major details not able to fit within the other 2 hour format, my view of Pemberly, and a better Mr. Bingly performance make it worth the effort of the longer version. I was able to talk Karl in to watching the two hour version with me, letting him interrupt the movie at any time to explain what is missing from this point in the book. He thought it a very good movie but does not seem ready to exhaust himself over the longer version. We will see!!!
We all received some movies to our liking. Anton got Wall-E, Meet the Robinsons (the idea of the secret lab); Isabella a collection of Barbie, Tinker Bell; and Karl got his requests of Dark Knight and Iron Man. As I mentioned before, since we do not have cable or dish services, television usage is limited to movies we own or netflix. So between relatives, each other and Santa, we have a whole new grouping to satisfy our tastes.
This month at our retreat, I took the middle group again, which included my two, and we discussed the most important gifts being shared at Christmas. The thing about this group, they all say Jesus first. It kind of makes for a short lesson. Well, I also turned the idea into what could they give as their most important gift.....
...their love!
I had the children color pictures of hearts and hands with a saying, "The most important gift I can give you is...my love!" The children were instructed to wrap it for their parents for Christmas. It was very sweet and wonderful all at the same time.
