bust your hole to manufacture MAGIC ENCHANTMENT WONDER etc...

[MuddhaOfSuburbia]

...then find your kids fixate on what are really quite shit things?

DD (12) said the other day, ooh, do you remember last year, where we watched Nativity [for the 93rd time] and ate sainsbos cheese balls?

thought input: minimal
cost input: minimal

that was the year we bought her a FUCKING HARP

the FUCKING HARP CAME HOME FROM THE WEST END IN A TAXI

I HAVEN'T BEEN IN A TAXI SINCE 2003

we even HID the FUCKING HARP

(tho how we HID the FH is beyond me)

[FauxFox]

gotta love them

[Hopefully]

This is my favourite post of the day.

I did get all fuzzy and warm when the DCs said their favourite bit of Christmas last year was reading Christmas stories under the Christmas tree. Awwww, how lovely and grateful and appreciative of life's little pleasures. Then DC1 pipes up, 'it was our favourite bit because daddy let us eat all the tinfoil chocolates off the tree.' Sigh.

[LaContessaDiPlump]

Ha!

I am making a special effort to not go all-out as I KNOW this will happen to my boys. DS2 will be over the moon with his 3 little green men (£5 off ebay) and DS1 will adore his cuddly stormtrooper which was £8 from Tesco. Simple things!

[ShesAStar]

Your right! Last year we took the DC on a Narnia experience to meet FC, we drove quite a long way and there were activities and we went through the wardrobe, led by a fawn. DS said do you remember when we saw FC last year it was so good because we got to have a Mac Donald's on the way home.

[Pooseyfrumpture]

I always attempt not to turn into my mother at Christmas with all the "don't you know how effort I put into that" but I do fail It's rather like the summer holidays when you don't totally ignore them book in multiple play dates, take them all around on day trips, camp out in the garden and do treasure hunts etc and then on the last day before they go back to school you bribe them with MacDonalds for not murdering each other in Clarks and they sit there and declare it the bestest thing they've done all summer and you know that when it comes to writing the What I Did This Summer bit that they aren't even going to remember they went to Alton Towers or Florida, all they are going to mention is bloody MacDonalds.

[kiwidreamer]

PMSL @ this thread, whenever anyone asks DS 7.5yrs what he enjoyed most about our trip to Australia in the summer his answer is... the fish and chips!

A fecking long way, a buttload of money... cuddling a Koala / petting a kangaroo / whale watching / theme park / digging for thunder eggs / the beach every day / meeting his toddler cousin for the first time / apartment with endless ocean views...

Nope.

The bloody fish and chips.

[HalfStar]

I have to know OP. The harp has pretty much gathered dust in a corner ever since, right?

[Olecranon]

My son got an iPad last year for Christmas and in his news when he got back to school he wrote that his best thing was a rubber he got in his stocking that looked like an apple. He couldn't remember anything else!

[Treats]

Feeling your pain. I went to a huge amount of effort a few years ago to make an advent calendar with a different toy every day to put towards a nativity scene........

....trampled underfoot in the rush to open the door of the chocolate one

I cling to the hope that they will remember my homemade advent calendar with fondness when they're grown up.

[MuddhaOfSuburbia]

aha

this is evidently more common than I'd thought

reminds me of other DD, 4th birthday- we went all over the place trying to find non-identical-but-absolutely-equivalent bikes (twins)- when they came home from nursery they rushed into the living room to find said bikes festoooooooned with balloons and streamers etc

afterwards: 'what did you get for your birthday, darling?'

'BOONS!'

I'll see you all down Mucky Ds on Boxing Day for the best christmas EVER

[MuddhaOfSuburbia]

and yes halfstar dd does play the harp

because she likes to eat

[Fizrim]

Mudda our McD's is open on Boxing Day, thanks for the idea! In fact, they are only closed Christmas Day. I am always up for an easy win in the parenting stakes!

DD has a long history of saying 'this is the best day ever' at every school trip, blah, whatever. So much for Disneyland Paris, then.

Over the summer we went to an event at our local library. When asked, other children talked about overseas trips as a highlight whereas DD picked a really mundane holiday to mention. It's a good job I'm not a competitive parent.

[SymphonyofShadows]

Ha! This reminds me of a friend of ours who took his DD to Lapland for a big surprise. Told her they were going shopping then whisked her off to the airport, caught a special FC themed flight, had all the sleigh, fur blanket, hot chocolate shizz. On the flight back she told him that it was great but wasn't the real FC as she could see where his beard was coming unstuck at the side.

[AlmaMartyr]

McDonalds was the best thing about our fab 2 week camping trip in France too Special mention to the fact that french Happy Meals come with pudding. DD told everyone, including a very sophisticated French friend of my parents who works in tourism who was thrilled to know that's what kids remembered.

[Pooseyfrumpture]

So basically MaccaD's are missing out on a marvellous marketing opportunity. Forget all this garden centre "having tea with Santa" shite. They should do it. They would make a fortune.

[Nearlyadoctor]

Not Christmas but last year we took DD(then 7) trick or treating with a few friends in the village and afterwards she declared it was absolutely the best Halloween ever!

So much for the year before when we were at Mickeys not so scary Halloween party in Florida...... Gotta love them.

[LucasNorthsTwiglets]

Not a Xmas thing but when we asked DS what his favourite thing about our trip to Disneyland Paris was, he said "sitting on the top bunk bed, eating chips".

[WhispersOfWickedness]

Oh yes, I have found my home on this thread
DS's birthday is near to Christmas, one year he said that the best present he'd had was a bendy straw from his party bag DD still talks fondly of the morning she was allowed to eat an orange in bed (from her stocking)

[fuzzpig]

:o

[muddymary]

Not Christmas but it reminds me of when we took a class of year 6 kids on quite an expensive school trip. When they wrote about it afterwards, the favourite thing by a long shot was stopping at the service station to buy sweets and seeing a cat walk past. We could've walked them to the local newsagents for a fraction of the cost!!

[ClashCityRocker]

It just goes to show, doesn't it.

Fwiw I was having a conversation with family about our best christmas as a kid. Mine was when there was a power cut on Christmas Day and we had Bbq turky. My siblings agreed, mum was

Mind you, she was most put out when I said my best ever present was a Black Samba yoyo which I got in my stocking...they did used to go to town at christmas and in hindsight spent a fair whack of the household budget on gifts.

On the christmas memories thread, it was interesting that very few of the cherished memories related to things that cost money - and most were very simple things.

I'm a firm believer that special memories happen organically and you can't create them. although I get sucked into it every bloody year

[DoveOfPeace]

I am quite a bit older than my sister.

She was talking about some little stocking fillers she received one year, and loved.....I know for a fact they were toys that came free with Happy Meals!!

[JacobFryesTopHatLackey]

Not Christmas related but DS1 did this on his third birthday. We took him to the zoo for a day out. Most of the day went over his head and he was completely nonplussed by the giraffes, gorillas and all the other animals. They all got a cursory 30 second glance until we got to the elephant enclosure. Where we saw diggers and jcbs in their natural environment shovelling elephant shit . We spent about half an hour watching them.

[Givinguph0pe]

We took ds - then 4 - to the safari park.

When we left we asked what his favourite animal had been. His answer was a pigeon.

[SummerNights1986]

We always try to do a couple of 'good days out' in the summer, but last year we really excelled ourselves.

Dh and I had 3 weeks off in the 6 weeks holiday (as well as weekends for the other 3 weeks) and we'd just had a bit of a windfall but didn't want to go abroad.

So over one summer we went to:

Thorpe Park
London (2 day trip)
2 different Zoos
Longleat
Cinema
Swimming
Numerous parks, soft plays and the kids favourite eateries
A farm where the dc did horseriding
2 days at the beach where dh built a fire, we ate dinner on the beach and stayed until it was dark then did stargazing

When they went back to school in September, ds1 (just going into Year 1) had to write a couple of sentences about the best thing he had done in the Summer.

His was: 'I watched my Spiderman DVD and ate crisps in bed with Dad'.

WTF!