Why My Kids are Getting More Experience Gifts This Year

It’s so secret that I’m a firm believe in gifting more experience gifts than toys. I made that mistake when my son was younger and when I found out I was having my daughter, I vowed that I wouldn’t make that same mistake twice. Gifting experiences and trips I’ve found offer way more value than a. toy that only lasts a few weeks, if that. I speak that from experience too. We’ve always but over the last few years we’ve made it a priority to travel.

From weekend getaways up and down the East Coast to Disney World and our most epic trip yet, a Disney Cruise to Alaska.

Now matter how big the trip or where it was, the experience and the memories are things all of us will carry for the rest of our lives.

 

With toys, my house was overrun with stuff. Especially when my son was an only child.

Christmas, birthdays and truthfully, any holiday was  an excuse for me to go overboard. I justified it by all the great deals I would find.

Sure Christmas morning would be fun and he’d be in awe at all the presents.

But would he play with them all?

Nope! Most years I was donating more than half of it and more than half of it was still in the boxes.

When my daughter came along I vowed it wasn’t happening any more.  Sure they still get some gets they’ve been hoping for but the extreme gift scene I had going on was going to stop.

Instead gifting them experience gifts like a day trip to the museum, a visit to a favorite theme park, a family day at the movies, the possibilities are endless really.

 

But gifting an experience allows us to get out of house more. It allows us to create memories together away from the tv screen,  the video games, all of the tech that seems to just suck kids in nowadays.

It allows us to be together,  which is hard enough with work schedules, activities, life, uninterrupted.

A little over two years ago I made it a goal to getaway at least once a month. Whether that meant a full blown Disney vacation, a weekend road trip to Hersheypark or a weekend away in an RV.

We’ve been consistently traveling and sticking with that trip a month theme and one thing I’ve noticed is that these are the moments the kids remember.

The moments they experience are the ones they continually talk about with wonder in their eyes.

These are the things they remember.

Ask them what they got for Christmas a few years ago and they won’t remember. Ask them about their Disney trip a few years ago or our trip and stay in a haunted hotel in Salem and their eyes will light up as they tell you all about their trip and what it was like for them.

So these are the reasons that they’ll have less presents toys under the tree and more experiences and trips for the years to come.

Have you ever given your kids an experience gift for Christmas?

Dawn