Tuesday Tell All

Well, I usually don't participate in the Tuesday tell all, but this one sounded fun so I thought I would join in. The topic was to tell a story of Christmas' past. One of my most memorable Christmas memories was when I was maybe 5 or 6. My 3 sisters and I would wake up repeatedly throughout the night when we were young checking to see if Santa had come yet. We had many years we opened Christmas presents in the very wee hours of the morning. We literally could not sleep until we knew that Santa had stopped at our house. ( I think my sister still takes cold medicine of Christmas eve to help her sleep and she is 27, sorry to divulge your secret Stace! )This particular year we were being especially annoying sneaking out of be ever 20 to 30 min. Now that I am a parent I can only imagine how frustrating this must have been! Well Santa decided to teach us a lesson (sometimes he was a very imaginative man). You see we had two living rooms both with Christmas trees. We only ever used the upstairs living room for Christmas and presents the other was purely for decoration. Well.... anyway "Santa" decided to put our presents downstairs so he would not be spotted during our repeated outings out of bed. Being the persistent bunch of girls that we were we kept right on checking all through the night. Come morning we stood in awe at the empty living room where the presents from Santa should have been. My dad came into the room and told us that he had warned us that Santa did not bring presents to naughty kids that didn't stay in their beds. Well.... of course by now we are all sobbing! We were the NAUGHTY kids who didn't get presents from Santa. After about a half hour of crying my dad suddenly thought of something. What if Santa had gotten confused and left the presents downstairs? We all raced to the basement to see that this is truly what happened. I wish that I had the picture that was taken of my little sister and I clutching our dolls with red puffy eyes and tear stained faces. (It is seriously priceless) We were so thankful that Santa hadn't forgotten the NAUGHTY kids after all. I wish I could tell you we never got out of bed again peeking for Santa.... but that is not the case. Even the very next year we were up looking for the man in Red, but I can tell you this. We were extremely careful!!! I am sure my parents think we never got up again.

This is now one of my favorite memories of Christmas. As a parent it makes me giggle to think of doing this to my own naughty little ones, and also makes me want to punch my dad at the same time. I mean really HOW COULD YOU! I could never have held out when 4 little girls started to cry. But, lesson learned. Merry Christmas to ALL.... even the naughty ones.