Well, as far as experience gifts go, we live in different states. When I was speaking of doing things with the girls, those were during visits. But my parents already plan experiences constantly (they're going to take the oldest two to a theater production when we visit over Thanksgiving), and when we do visit they take them to the mall, the park, and stuff like that all the time, plus to a kids' amusement park on occasion, the carnival, the occasional museum, the movies, etc. Honestly, I don't really "count" stuff like that, or clothes given not at holidays, as gifts, because otherwise my mom would go insane with wanting to get the kids stuff and being limited so much. His parents aren't so much able to do these things because they work daylight hours and don't have as much money for admissions, so it tends to widen the gap. They see my parents a lot more and do a lot more with them. We won't be with them for Christmas. However, we are moving a bit closer to my parents' in the spring, and we'll be in the neighboring state about 2 hours away.
I am trying to encourage my parents towards LEGOs, at least. My husband and I both love LEGOs, and since my husband is an engineer, he likes the girls spending a lot of time with a building toy. So he's less likely to object to LEGOs than other toys. And they can all go together in a bin and don't take up a *lot* of room, so there's less of a storage issue. Now if I could just convince her to go with LEGO Robotics...