Harkening back to this post, back when I questioned the sanity of buying ANYTHING for my children for Christmas, as bringing in a tub of sticks and sand may extract the same amount of happiness from them, I present you with this, as proof.

Santa found packages of geckos at Wal-Mart for 88 cents each. Or so I presume. Where else would one find packages of squishy geckos, right? Yes, both kids played with the plethora of toys they opened–more, I gander, to amuse their parents and their grandmother than for any other real reason. But as soon as we left the room, they gathered up the geckos, and had a party.

I reappeared minutes later and there were dozens of geckos stuck to the walls of my home, their oily bodies leaving gecko prints behind. Geckos had to be buckled in to the driver’s and passenger’s seats in the Loving Family SUV. Cute, new, fuzzy puppies were forced out of their plush carriers to make way for, you guessed it, the gecko family. The older child maneuvered her new bike around the kitchen island while clutching a handful of the little buggers.

It’s really making me think, all this gecko business. I’m about ready to ditch all of this Christmas hoohah and replace the holiday with a celebration that’s simpler and more wholesome. Something that involves a whole lot less consumerism and fewer batteries.

88 cents. Two happy kids. I’m learning.