The Christmas We Stopped Buying Stuff (And Started Making Memories)

Let me be honest with you. Our basement is basically a museum of good intentions.

Toys that were everything on December 25th. Forgotten by Valentine’s Day. Rediscovered at the garage sale in June, priced at $2, and honestly? Still overpriced.

So a few years back, Lori and I made a decision. No more stuff. Instead, every Christmas our kids get five things: something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read — and an experience.

The experience is the one that changes everything.

Christmas 2023. Hunter is six. We sit down with the kids to dream up their experiences for the year.

I’d just gotten back from Scotland. Eight guys. Eight days. Golf courses that looked like God designed them on a dare — sea wind in your face, the smell of wet grass and salt air hanging over every shot. I may have talked about it once or twice. Or every single day since I got home. Lori would say the latter.

Now in our family, bucket list conversations are basically a contact sport. We talk about them at dinner, on road trips, in the car line at school — where do you want to go, what do you want to see, what would make you say I can’t believe I actually did that? The kids have heard Lori and I go back and forth on this more times than they can count. St. Andrews someday. And Pebble Beach — I’d said it out loud more than once — that’s the one I want to be ready for.

We didn’t think Hunter was keeping score.

He was keeping score.

A few weeks later, completely unprompted, we asked the kids what they wanted their experience to be for Christmas. Hunter didn’t hesitate. Didn’t look around the room. Just looked up, calm as you like, and said:

“I want to go on a golf trip with you. To Pebble Beach.”

Six years old.

I did what any loving father would do.

I laughed. Told him I loved him. And immediately negotiated him down to San Diego.

Christmas morning he came downstairs to find out where we were headed — and the look on his face when I told him San Diego was everything. Six years old, already planning his packing list before the wrapping paper hit the floor.

Four months later, a newly minted seven-year-old and his very excited dad touched down in Southern California. Southern California in April has this way of feeling like the universe is showing off — 72 degrees, the kind of blue sky that makes you feel slightly guilty for everyone back home in Colorado staring at a gray ceiling and a snowblower.

We stayed at the Lawrence Welk Resort — 18-hole big course, 18-hole par 3, and a cafe that would become the site of one of my favorite lunches in recent memory. I had absolutely no idea what to expect from a seven-year-old on a golf course. Honestly? Hunter had no idea what to expect from me either. Fair enough.

First morning: par 3 course. Hunter steps up, morning dew still on the fairways, and proceeds to make multiple pars from the front tees.

Multiple. Pars.

I quietly recalculated who was teaching whom on this trip.

We sat down for lunch at the little cafe on the course — cold lemonades, the smell of sunscreen and fresh-cut grass still on us — and celebrated like we’d just won the Ryder Cup. I asked him what he wanted to do that afternoon.

He looked at me like the answer was obvious.

“Can we play the big course?”

There it was. That’s my son.

We went out that afternoon — Hunter teeing off at 100 yards on par 3s, 175 on par 4s, 225 on par 5s — and he played like he’d been doing this his whole life. Which, relative to his whole life, he kind of had.

That night I did what any reasonable golf dad does at 9pm after a full day of golf with a seven-year-old.

I checked tee times at Torrey Pines.

Twilight round. Available. Done.

We slept in. Played the par 3 again in the morning. Then drove up to one of the most iconic public courses in America and stepped onto the first tee just as the late afternoon sun started pulling those long warm shadows across the fairway. The Pacific was sitting right there on the horizon, doing absolutely nothing to help my son’s focus — or mine. Hunter hit shots that made strangers stop and watch.

I took a video to send to Lori. She cried. I pretended I didn’t.

We closed out the trip with a surprise visit to LEGOLAND — because balance is important and also Hunter had been very patient about the whole not-Pebble-Beach thing.

We came home with tans, tired legs, and the particular kind of quiet happiness that only comes from doing something you’ll never forget with someone you’d do anything for.

And Hunter, being Hunter, was already scheming.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about making memories with your kids.

It doesn’t require a trust fund. It doesn’t require two weeks off. It doesn’t require a perfect plan or a Pinterest board or a spreadsheet — though I may have had a spreadsheet. I’m not going to confirm or deny that.

What it requires is a decision. A decision that their time in your house, under your roof, at the age where they still think you hung the moon — that time is finite and it is flying. And the moments you carve out on purpose are the ones that outlast everything else.

The five-gift framework changed how our family does Christmas. But more than that, it changed how we think about the year. Because when you tell a six-year-old that his gift is going to be an experience — something you’ll do together — he doesn’t spend December counting down to a box under the tree. He spends it dreaming. Planning. Scheming. Asking questions at dinner. Pulling up YouTube videos of golf courses at bedtime like a tiny, determined travel agent.

And you get to be the person he’s dreaming with.

A few things that have helped us actually make it happen rather than just talk about it:

Put it on the calendar like it’s a board meeting. The trip doesn’t get real until it has a date. Pick the date first, figure out the details second. Everything else works around it.

Let them be part of the planning. Hunter knew we were going to San Diego months before we left. He had opinions about the course, the hotel, what he wanted to eat. That anticipation? That’s half the experience.

It doesn’t have to be big to be meaningful. San Diego was special. But so is nine holes on a Tuesday evening after school when the light is just right and nobody else is on the course and your kid asks you something out of nowhere that you’ll think about for years. Show up for those too.

Give yourself permission to be present. Leave the inbox alone. Put the phone in your pocket. The texts will be there when you land. These moments won’t.

The scorecards fade. The handicaps change. The LEGO sets get outgrown. But the kid who stands on the first tee at Torrey Pines with the Pacific Ocean behind him and looks up at you like this is the greatest day of my life — that one stays with you forever.

Go make some memories. The basement has enough stuff.

And yes — Pebble Beach is still on the list. We’re just getting ready for it.

More on that next time. 🏌️