As I probably mentioned before, my mom’s side of the family has a reunion every five years at Christmas. This is the year that we are doing it. For gifts, we all draw names. We have four adult gifts to buy. Somebody’s lucking out and getting all the little guys, but anyway. . .

We are buying for my cousin, D, who is some high-falutin’ executive at an internets company in San Diego, CA, although you wouldn’t know that if you met him because he’s very unpretentious. He looks just like Jerry Seinfeld, by the way. Whenever I see him (every five years), I always have to marvel at how much he looks like him. I’m sure he’s sick of hearing about how much he looks like Jerry Seinfeld. He has varied interests and used to be semi-pro (I think) in beach volleyball out there. But, what do you get someone who makes lots more money than you do and whom you don’t even know very well even if he is related to you?

OK, next drawee: D’s wife L. I have met her twice. Once ten years ago and once five years ago. She’s very nice. I think she has an art background or her dad’s an artist, or a jazz musician. She has some kind of job in the high tech industry although I think it’s more on the human resources side of things. She’s very petite (D is very tall). She’s from California. That’s what I know about her. Now, what would you get someone who you knew that much about? I mean, I know more about some of my online friends than I do about her.

As it turns out though, I think shopping for women you don’t really know is easier than guys, because with women, you can always go for candles or bath salts or yummy lotions or calendars or a nice scarf or whatnot. Actually, I e-mailed both L and D earlier for gift suggestions and found out that they are renovating their house big time and that L might appreciate something having to do with home decor, etc. That made narrowing down a gift a little easier as someone had just told me about this new magazine called Dom*ino which is published by the same people who publish Lu*cky. It’s the same thing as Lu*cky, but about home decorating. It’s not very expensive so it fits our budget. That’s what L is getting.

Our other two names — one is my cousin’s husband whom I’ve never met, but I was able to figure something out for him (see earlier post). The other is another cousin’s son who is about 22 or something like that. I have no. frickn. clue what to get a 22 year old guy. There’s all the generic stuff like Old Navy gift card. . . hey, there’s an idea . . . maybe I’ll just to do that.

Gift cards are easy, right? But they kind of just scream, I don’t know you or what you could possibly want, so here’s this gift card for you to go find what you want. There’s no excitement when they open up that gift card envelope, there’s no oohing and aaahing. There’s no — that’s just what I needed or wanted. I know, I could get him a sweater or something, but again, kinda generic, and I really have no idea what his tastes are.

By the way, I think my cousin D is getting a gift card too.

Do you have to buy for friends or family you don’t know very well? What do you get them?

We bought our Christmas tree last Saturday morning. J is usually an ogre about getting a tree and about Christmas in general, so it was kind of neat to see him getting excited about going to get it with the kids.

We just went to a local lot and quickly picked one out. Daniel was not all that interested, but he’s paying attention to more than we know. Anyway, while we were waiting to get our tree stump cut down and to get the tree bagged, Daniel and I went just outside the lot into the parking lot to walk around. Daniel found a small tree that he liked in a grassy area near our car. He was standing there holding onto the tree watching other cars go by while we waited.

After a few minutes, we went to check on the progress of the Christmas tree wrapping and then came back out to wait some more. There was some dirt right around the tree (the one that he liked hugging) that I hadn’t really been paying attention to either time we were there.

“Look, Mama, ants!” I hear Daniel say.

“What!?” At about that same time, I hear one of the workers at the lot who was putting a Christmas tree on top of someone’s car nearby say, “Yep, those are fire ants.”

“What?!”

I quickly pulled Daniel away from the tree and began to examine his feet and pants. Sure enough. There were ants. Not that many, but too many all the same. I took off his shoes and socks and stripped his pants off. Thankfully, we got all of the ants off of his clothes before he got bitten. I had some on my shoes as well.

Crisis averted. Mostly. Next year, we’ll be sure to check the area for anthills.

Mommy’s taking pictures while Daniel’s playing in the ant pile.

Home and decorated! Please disregard the concentration of ornaments in the lower left corner of the tree. They have been artfully arranged by a 2.5 year old.

An interesting article all about that enduring classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas.