New Christmas Tradition

When I was in college I became good friends with a girl who tragically lost twin sisters in a car accident when they were fairly young. She once told me that her mom had a tradition that every year on the twin's birthdays, Christmas, or other holidays they would celebrate by donating things they would have given their twins to charity or someone else in need. I think that her mom would even buy prom dresses for other girls during the years the twins would have been in high school.

After Peter and Jane passed away Isaac and I decided this is a tradition we would like to mimic. We were planning on having this Christmas holiday devoted to our babies. Isaac and I really didn't have anything we wanted because we were prepared to give everything we had to our twins.

So this year Isaac and I decided that instead of spending a lot of money on gifts for each other that we would sign up for a Sub-for-Santa and try to find a little boy and girl about Peter and Jane's age that we could buy presents for. We ended up getting a little boy who was about 5 months old and a little girl about 2 months old. Each child had a list of needs/wants and we could choose which items to buy.

It was hard to go shopping for children other than our own because we just kept finding things we would have loved to buy for Peter and Jane. But we also had a really good time going shopping together and it felt good to "get in the Christmas spirit" of giving. For the little boy we bought a coat and stroller along with a few other things. We gave some sleepers and newborn baby toys to the little girl. We would have loved to give these things to our own children, but we feel really good about keeping this tradition going to celebrate the memory of our precious angels.