Time versus money

There is a new IKEA Christmas commercial out this year. It'll have you in tears.  Basically, they ask kids to write letters to Santa  asking for what they want then they ask them to write ,enters to their parents asking for what they want.  Almost all the kids ask their parents for more time together, dinner together, playing together, one whole entire day together.  Then they ask the kids if you could only give one of those letters, which would you give, and they say the one to their parents.

I cried.

But I thought about our family.  We spend a lot of time together. We have dinner every single night together.  We have family movie night ever single Friday and family breakfast every single Sunday morning.  We often spend an entire weekend just us, or at least one of the two days.

And so I'm not sure what my kids would write.  Because the complaints I hear from my oldest is that we don't have as nice of a car as her friends (it's 15 yrs old) or "we never do anything" or "why don't  we go out to dinner more" or "everyone else goes to Disney more than us", and so on.  She doesn't even always complain about this negatively, sometimes she is just curious.  Like when everyone gets those books at the Scolastic book fair at school that have the jewelry attached (ugh, those are like $12 for a flimsy book and bracelet and we could go to Claire's and get something better for less) and we tell her if she she wants something she has to use her own money.

This is the deal.

But... Watching that commercial, I feel validated, I feel like it's worth it to lack these things because obviously kids really just want their home and family and TIME.  We have two old cars that we wish we could replace, windows in our house are 35 yrs old and need replacing, I wish I could enroll my kids in dance lessons, we have the tightest budget of anyone in our inner and outer circles we know.  But... We aren't over scheduled.  We eat dinner together every night.  I know the names of everyone in all of my kids classes and see their teachers regularly.  I'm home to deal with sick kids or random stuff that comes up so we aren't sent into stressful chaos when a wrench is thrown.  I'm here.  It's a trade off for sure and it's a fine line... I won't say I don't get envious of new cars and dance lessons, but... I treasure knowing that the trade off translates into a calmer, more minimalist life, and (I hope) stronger relationships.

The snag is this... The kids who do have all that...usually don't realize what a great deal they have... They DO want the stuff! ;)