The Male Version of Shopping

With the growth of our family through marriage and grandchildren, it's not always easy to get a Christmas present for everyone in the immediate family. Our children handled this issue several years ago, when they decided that everyone in the family from their generation should draw names for Christmas. This has worked out surprisingly well.

Contrary to popular opinion, not all guys wait until Christmas Eve to do their shopping. For example, I have six guys in my family now (including my husband, sons and son-in-law) who do shopping for Christmas. Some of them are quite good at it. Because they like to compete, either with themselves or each other, most of them work hard at finding gifts that will really stand out and be the perfect gift for the name they draw that year. Several of the boys are exceptional at choosing gifts, even when it comes to girls. This comes in handy since they have way more nieces than nephews.

Most of the time our guys are well-prepared when Christmas rolls around, but once in awhile one or the other of them has a major fail in the gift department.

As I mentioned last week, this was our "off" year, so we celebrated Christmas with our married children and their spouses on New Year's Day. I have always asked the kids for lists of items they want for Christmas and lately, thanks to technology, they not only text their requests, but sometimes they even send links. Stephanie, Kylee and Shelby have found this especially handy for when one of the boys draw their names. It's hard to make a mistake in your gift-giving that way.

Hard, but not impossible.

One of my sons waited until this morning before checking to see if the gift he had ordered last November had arrived yet. It had not. He was at a loss until further checking revealed that somehow he managed to not quite complete the purchase like he thought he had.

I happened to be making a run to Meijer this morning for Gatorade and Vernors since one of our family fell ill with a violent stomach bug, so I did a little frantic belated Christmas shopping to make sure that everyone had a present under the tree.

I ended up finding this great pair of boots on clearance, so everything turned out okay.

Later on when we were opening gifts, I explained to Matt that I had ordered the study books he'd specifically asked for, but they wouldn't be arriving until next week. The other son protested that he had done the same thing with his gift and I'd raked him over the coals, but I maintained that it's a completely different situation. After all, I actually purchased something to give Matt. He only "thought" he purchased something to give as his gift.

So how good are you at gift giving? Do you hit the bullseye every year?