Christmas on the compact

As we've been approaching Christmas, I've been a little nervous about 'keeping the compact'. We have worked hard to simplify the holiday, so we never go hog wild. But I do want that the present under the tree from us is one that has a little bit of a wow factor. I had this nagging feeling that we might have to bend the rules a bit. But then Mary Beth, the compact instigator, arranged a meeting of compactees late one evening at a local coffee shop. We swapped ideas and I left more confident that we were going to be able to pull this off. And I think we have. Of course the jury is still out, and we will find out for sure on Tuesday morning, but I'm feeling good. I did lose about one whole day of my life to craigslist, scanning the metro area listings for kid stuff. In the end, both the purchases I made were within one mile of my house and I was able to walk to make my deals. I liked that. The kids have gotten into the game and we've put together some great gifts for their cousins from local re-use gems like ArtStart and Practical Goods. I think we ended up getting all of our gifts (with one notable exception from Woodbury- which will be revealed on Tuesday) from within 2 miles of our house, and everything was from either a regular old citizen, or a locally owned store. It feels good. We just realized today that we only have four more months 'on the compact'. Over all, I think it's doing it's job. We definitely buy less in general and I haven't been to Target for 8 months, so right there it is all worthwhile.