Since our boys are the first grandchildren and first nieces and nephews and first great-grandchildren to a huge family, their collection of toys has grown every Christmas and birthday from a toy box to a corner of the room, to what amounts to several toy piles. And it's only going to expand this Christmas.

The corner of the room that the Christmas tree goes in had been overtaken by a toy organizer and a bunch of larger toys that don't fit in any organizer. My goal was to have the tree up by the end of the weekend. So, I set myself to the task of going through every toy in the house.

I announced to the kids that they have lots of toys and there are other kids that don't have as much as they do. They were going to choose toys to give away. We ended up giving away 5 tall kitchen garbage bags full of toys, throwing away 3 full of broken toys or pieces that don't match each other. It was truly overwhelming. The project took over the entire living room since we had to pull everything out, put it into piles, then organize and put away what was being kept.

They almost don't need Christmas now - it's like they have all new toys. They've found things they haven't played with in a long time just because they didn't know they were there since they were at the bottom of the toy box.

I hope this isn't coming across as ungrateful... I really really appreciate that aunts and uncles and grandparents and great-grandparents love giving my boys gifts. I do too! I just have to make sure to give away what they've outgrown more regularly and manage the small amount of space in my living room better.

Once I was done, we put up the Christmas tree. Most of the ornaments are clumped right at a level where Marc can reach though I tried to encourage him to spread them out. LOL Then we turned off the lights and plugged the tree in. The look on their faces made all that work worthwhile. Alex, especially, was very excited. This is the first year he really understands that something is going on. They sat and counted all the pink lights and all the blue lights and all the green lights and looked at all the ornaments and then went to bed.