Christmas shopping dilemma

I know we've all struggled with "what can you get someone who has everything?"  - it's one of the reasons that gift cards are so ubiquitous.  However, here's a new one:  What can you get someone who NEEDS everything?

I want to go get Christmas presents for my son, daughter, and husband.  There are a lot of things that they need, that I expect to go buy and have Insurance help replace.  Can I buy those things as Christmas Presents?  If I do, can I still submit the receipts, or does that cheapen the gift?  Can they wait until Christmas to receive those items - or will they be going out to get them now, because they simply need them?

And how exciting is it to open a beloved book, as a Christmas gift, and then collapse in tears because you'd forgotten about that particular one, and now you've been reminded all over again about all that you've lost?  It's hard to explain what is "fine", and what pushes you over the edge.

Do I purchase all new and different things?  How do I even think of what to get?  And it seems so surreal to buy games and friviolous items, when so much of my shopping energy needs to go to essential shopping.  I'm thankful that I have friends that go shopping with me, and understand when I've hit my limit. Sometimes it is just too overwhelming.

I've mostly determined that this year will be minimal gift giving.  Not because of budget, or any grand conservative goals, but simply because we're so aware of how wonderful it is to be together.  I hope that we will be in our new house to celebrate, but even if we're in the hotel, it will be joyful.

We've got a tree up in the hotel room, and a little Nativity.  That makes it Christmas.  I like to have the Nativity out from the beginning - it is "the reason for the season", after all!  I have one ornament on the tree, the one I got at the Craft Fair in Houlton over Thanksgiving weekend - it is a red door on a white house, so we had it engraved "Easterbrooks 2019".  (I saw ornaments for "first year in our new house" - but those did not seem right.)  I have a box with a few of the ornaments my grandmother made, ready to put on when the girl comes home for the weekend.  I've already had a couple friends tell me they have an ornament for me.  It's going to be fun to put up a real tree in the new house and decorate it - whenever it happens!

It does seem quiet, though...  I had a 100-disc CD player, completely full of the Christmas CDs we'd collected through the years.  All of the Very Special Christmas CDs, Twisted Christmas, some instrumental, some country, some pop...  I'd get at least one or two every year!  We (read: Bob) had copied them to our computers so we could play them ...  but even those were lost.  I'd love to recapture some of those, if anyone wants to lend them to us for a few days to make a copy.  (I'm very sensitive to copyright rules - but I honestly have no guilt in replacing lost items with a copy.) 

This has always been one of my favorite quotes.  I think this year it's particularly appropriate!