A Wii or a Dairy Goat?

Here is Henry's Christmas wish list:

I'd love to hear your family traditions of giving to others.  Do you get tired of ALL. THE. STUFF. like we do?  Just in case you are wondering, we are not planning on buying Henry a machete for Christmas.  Or an Xbox.  Although I think a new yo-yo is a perfectly reasonable request.

I did realize something though.  This week 2 catalogs came in the mail.  One was from Oriental Trading, an entire company that sells nothing but junk like this:

  

The other catalog was from Samaritan's Purse, and its purpose was the complete opposite.  It was the Christmas Giving catalog, where you can purchase things like blankets or mosquito nets or a share in a new community well where there was previously no clean running water.

 

The kids always flip through whatever is out on the island where they sit to have breakfast and snacks.  There were dozens of dog-eared pages of slap bracelets and temporary tattoos.  This of course made me roll my eyes and promptly chuck the thing into the recycling bin, but I didn't really think about it until the next day when Henry brought me the other catalog.  "Mom, do you think we could do this again this year?  You know, like we bought the milk for those kids last year?"

It made me realize that although I can't control everything my kids see or hear or are exposed to, I can have an influence on what they think they need.  Just allowing them to be exposed to the fact that getting a milk goat would be a dream gift for so many families is significant.  Putting a jar out to save money together as a family for something like this helps just a little bit to bring the "need" for an iPod Touch into a little clearer focus.