As my children are getting older, I find that what I did for gifts for Christmas when they were younger is starting not to work as well now that they are growing up. For some reason, this year, I wanted our Christmas to be less about the presents and more about spending time together as a family. I am unsure if it is because I am also getting older and realizing what is most important in my life, which is the time I spend with my family.

We went on a family vacation this past summer to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. While there, we decided to splurge a little and do a couple of excursions. We went zip-lining in the jungle, and we swam with dolphins. While we were doing these excursions, the thought kept coming to me repeatedly. We need to do more experiences like this for Christmas instead of just buying stuff. I think that is when my attitude about Christmas changed for me.

Months after our vacation, we still talk about those excursions and always look at the pictures. Do the kids ever talk about what they got for Christmas in the past? Nope, they sure don’t. Most of the time, it seems that once they return to school from their Christmas break, they are done playing with the gifts they received that Christmas. To me, that seems like a massive waste of money.

So this Christmas, my husband and I tried to do an experience gift. I think my children loved this idea more than a bunch of tiny gifts. What is an expereince gift? If you’re not familiar with an experience gift, a few examples would be season tickets to an amusement park, a museum, an aquarium, movie passes, a trip somewhere, something you can all do together as a family, etc… We live in a small town, so we don’t have amusement parks or museums near by, so I tried thinking outside the box to find an experience gift I can do with my family that would bring us closer together and let us hang out.

The idea I finally came up with was getting e-bikes for everyone in the family. We love to go bike riding, and used to go all the time until we moved, so we hardly go anymore because we now live on a hill. It has been so hard to go bike riding because of that. No matter what direction we go from our house, we will be riding up a hill. We only go on bike rides once or maybe twice a summer now, and I miss going on a family bike ride. Now that we got e-bikes, hopefully, this will help with our problem of living on a hill and we’ll be able to get out on bike rides as a family more often. I hope we can spend some more quality time together as a family this coming summer, and that we will talk about the e-bikes we got for Christmas for years to come.

Making memories to me is important to me and this seemed like a perfect year to start with experience gifts. Do you have any experience gifts you have tried? I would love to hear your ideas. Please share!