I was telling my sister about Haley's second Christmas the other day.
1997. Hubby and I were young & broke. We were in our first home (yay!), but without much extra cash. It was early September, (I was thinking ahead) and I decided that the best thing for us to do was...layaway. Do stores even do this anymore?
Anyway, hubby and I went to a local department store and picked her out, a baby doll, a little-tykes, pink doll high-chair (I can still remember it! She played with it for
years) and a few more things we thought she'd enjoy. We put it all in layaway.
Every week, I'd take some of our extra money, (it wasn't much I can tell you because we didn't have much, I'm thinking maybe $20 or so) and I'd go pay on the Christmas presents. The second week of October, we paid it off and brought it home to hide until Christmas.
I can't tell you how excited we were! We were able to give our little girl a Christmas.
I learned a valuable lesson from those hard times. If I thought ahead and planned early enough, we could always give our kids a Christmas.
Fast forward 11 years later.
I still start Christmas shopping in September. But, long gone are the days that I was all done by the second week of October. {{grin}}
Happy Monday!
-Jen
