I’m recapping our full Christmas trip tomorrow, but I thought I would share how we prepared for Christmas in PA and VA while in Colorado. If you live away from family and are traveling over the holidays, you have a few options.
- Buy everything there. Depending on how much time you have before Christmas (or another holiday or birthday), you can buy gifts when you arrive. This would’ve been a nice option because both PA and VA have sales tax rates that are several percentage points lower than Colorado. We arrived on the evening on the 22nd, didn’t want to rely on having to find gifts on such a short timeline, and did buy a few random gifts on the other end.
- Buy online and ship to your destination. This is how we bought most of our gifts. I signed up for Amazon Student and shipped a few purchases to my parents’ house. I wrapped stuff once I was there.
- Buy at home and mail. I did mail a box of gifts I purchased in person and some early-arriving online orders. I wrapped everything in Colorado so that it was under-the-tree ready when it was delivered.
- Buy at home and pack. You can also buy stuff then bring it with you on your trip. This has pluses and minuses. If you are driving, you probably have enough space to pack gifts (this is what we did when we lived in North Carolina). If you are flying, you can’t pre-wrap gifts because they will go through security. You also have to be careful of bag weights and the cost of checking bags. Mac is active duty, so most airlines have a policy that allows service members free checked bags. We did check a bag and tucked a few small, last-minute gifts in it (aka gifts that I forgot to put in the box I shipped).
How do y’all prepare for traveling for holidays?
I always buy beforehand and ship everything, it makes life so much easier.
Our go to method when we were far away from home was to shop on-line and have everything shipped to my parent’s house. I had it sent in my name so that it wouldn’t get mixed up with their on-line shopping and then wrapped everything when we arrived. Now that we’re closer, I still shop on-line, but wrap ahead of time and enjoy Christmas break.
We always buy THERE. Except this year, of course, when we didn’t go home. But we always try and get there a few days early so we can do all our shopping there and not worry about having to fly with it. Much simpler!