At our house, all gifts have been opened already and I'm pretty sure no one is going to have a warm fuzzy memory of anything wrapped by me. The thing is, I don't actually wrap. I "bag." Put the gift in a bag, cover it with tissue paper and call it done. This year we didn't even buy cute little Christmas bags. We used what we had (bonus points if the tag was still on it from last year and had the correct recipient's name!) It's all about reducing, reusing and recycling, right?
Now Mark has some different ideas about wrapping gifts. I'm here to testify that sometimes opening a gift from him can be a real challenge. For a time it was pretty easy--he used maps or the Sunday comics. Then he graduated to the gift wrapping "big time." I have received a gift that was wrapped in a whole ball of string. Yep, a whole ball. Another time we had just pruned a tree and he took the time to cut a skinny branch carefully into 2" pieces. He cut a piece of wood a little bigger than the gift (which I can't even remember), nailed the little branch pieces all around the bottom piece of wood, stuck the gift inside, and nailed another piece of wood on top. Imagine the gift being held hostage in its little wooden jail--I had to use a crow bar to free it. Then there was the year of the duct tape. What guy wouldn't think THAT was a great wrapping idea? And last year my ipod was wrapped in wire mesh with a lot of wire "ribbon." We had to take time out to find the wire snippers.
Well, he couldn't let this year pass by without continuing the tradition. The gift he wrapped for Charlotte was in a big ball of bubble wrap. Lucky her--he is starting her wrapping adventure with little baby steps. But she and Levi both better be prepared...and have a big variety of gift-opening tools available.
