Hellobee Boards

My extended family always has. There's over 20 of us. It was getting ridiculous.

This year my parents said ENOUGH! Together, my dad & his siblings agreed that gifts are done once you turn 18. Focus on the kids instead.

My brother, sister and I decided among ourselves to quit doing gifts, too. Instead we pitch in and get our parents something big!

Brother - wife + 3 kids live out of state
Sister - husband + 2 kids - live 20 min from us
Sister - single - lives 25 min from us

We do a combination of individual and family gifts depending on the year. When my brother's kids were younger, I would buy them a membership to the zoo or something like that. This is the first Christmas for my sister's twins, so we are doing individual gifts, but might do a family gift when they are a bit older.

DH has 7 (!) brothers and sisters and we typically do individual gifts if we travel there. If we don't travel, then we have typically only done gifts for his parents and the children. Until this year though, only 2 of them have had kids or been married, so it hasn't been out of hand. Now that they are getting married and having kids, we might go to kids only.

All kids get their own gifts. We decided on a per child budget and I am trying to stick to that per child. It does get expensive; we have 7 nieces and nephews. But Christmas only comes once a year!

Last year on my side we decided no adult gifts except for my mom.
This year on DH side we decide in lieu of adult gifts we are sponsoring a family for the holidays.

We decided this year that we would stop buying presents for adult siblings on DH's side (6 kids between the two of them), but my 20 year old sisters are still getting presents

On my side of the family only the kids (2 nieces) receive presents with the exception of my 18 year old sister. On DH's side we give presents to 6 sets of aunts and uncles, 7 cousins, 2 dogs, grandfather, parents, sister and her boyfriend. We're broke.

Just gifts for the kiddos. On a rare occasion we'll do a gift card for the parents for dinner out, but we all agreed when we first started having kids that it's just easier to just focus on the kids.

So far we only have 4 kids on both sides of our family. M is the only grandchild on my side and we have 3 nephews on DH's side. Their father (my DH's brother) passed away at Christmas time last year, so we have tried to play an even bigger role in their lives in the past year and it was extra-important to us to spoil them this Christmas

Hopefully we'll have lots more nieces and nephews in the future and we'll have to re-evaluate then.

We only do gifts for the kids.

DH's family is big so for the past few years we have done a version of drawing names, where each family/sibling buys for one other family, with a $100 cap total. It has worked out well, but last year everyone bought something little for all the kids (4 then, now 5), except us! So I think I am doing board books for all the kids this year.

My family is smaller, just me and my brother and his wife, no kids. We buy for everyone, but it is kind of ridiculous the difference in gift lists between our family (on a budget and with LO) and my brother (DINKs)...sigh

@Cchoi4: we get gifts only for the kids and white elephant for adults. With a $20 minimum

We do gifts for the kids on both sides of the family. On my side, my sister and I buy gifts for my mom and she buys "couple" gifts for us and our SOs. On my husbands side, we don't exchange with his parents.

For the first time, my family is doing a secret santa thing where we each got assigned a person and are buying gifts for just that person. The grandkids aren't included. I didn't mind the expense so much as the hassle of buying gifts for 10+ family members. I'm really looking forward to doing this.

We get our parents, siblings, and nieces individual gifts. It gets $$$!!

We've thought about doing stuff for everyone else (grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.), but it adds up so quickly. =\