We are going out of town for the weekend so today I wanted to get some cleaning done and a head start on the "undecorating" that needs to happen around here. First I spent a while helping the girls really clean their room. Their idea of clean and mine are totally different and I have not been there helping for a while so there was a lot of cleaning to be done. Then I started taking the ornaments off the tree. This year I did not decorate that tree - our family tree. I was behind I felt with the decorating because of working on my other projects so I let the kids decorate it totally on their own while I finished decorating other parts of the house. That was big for me. They did a great job - again not done the way it would have been done if I was there - but for them it looked beautiful. When I hang the ornaments I am always taken back to the people or places I got them from. I love the memories every year. I did not realize how much I had missed out of that part of my Christmas until this afternoon when I was putting them away. I have always loved decorating the tree - I remember back to when my mom would hand each of us an ornament and we would get to place it on the tree. It was magic for me. I do not have a themed tree for our family tree. I have other trees I decorate around themes but this one is filled with handmade ornaments, ornaments from family and friends and mixtures of fancy, vintage, and plain. I laid them all out on the floor as I put them carefully away and thought about where each one had come from and what it meant to me. It was wonderful! I again felt the magic I had felt as a child. That magic I felt also a couple of days before Christmas with Autumn. Because we did Christmas different this year we did not do "Santa"gifts under the tree. I know that is weird but we were trying to have a simple Christmas and things centered around family so that is what we focused on on Christmas day. But a couple of days before Christmas as we opened our "twelve days" present Autumn said "We could make that for Santa - he is going to love it!" I said, "Autumn you know that Santa probably is not coming to our house this year, there are so many houses and other kids who need him more than us." Autumn replied, "I know, you say that but I have been praying for Santa to bring me something and I just know he will". Well, I got to thinking about this. This child has great faith - how do I handle this and the one thing I did not realize was that she still "believed". So I asked her what she wanted Santa to bring and she told me she could not tell me and if he brought her a "homemade" gift then she would know it was me and there was no Santa. I asked the kids to help me find out, finally Chloe got it out of her what she really wanted - a dog that walks on a leash. (Not a real dog - thank goodness- but a toy one). Chloe and I had a long talk and she said I had to get it for her. Christmas would be ruined if we let Autumn down. So I took all the bottle money I had and some other cash I had for something else and went and bought her that silly dog. That evening I read her a cute book about a Santa mouse who falls out of the sleigh and finds his way to a lighted Christmas tree with his gift waiting for Santa to find him. The gift was wrapped in a yellow ribbon. And the story says if you find a present wrapped with a yellow ribbon then you know that the Santa mouse came with Santa. I had bought a cute mouse to go with the story because I had intended to use it for something else. I showed her our Santa mouse and she hid it in our Santa tree. I told her he would be watching her all of Christmas Eve so she had to be good in order to get a present from Santa. She promised she would and also asked if we could keep it a secret - she did not want Hayden to know for some reason. I had a talk with Hayden and Taylor about it and they agreed it would be great fun to do this little surprise for Autumn. Sure enough she tried really hard to be good all day. She was the first one up Christmas morning and found the gift under the Santa tree wrapped with a yellow ribbon. "Mom, mom guess what - the Santa mouse came just like the story said - but I know if the present is "homemade" then you did it!" I acted like I had no idea that it was even there. It killed her to wait until everyone got up (another advantage to our "twelve days" was that everyone slept in!) Sure enough Santa had brought her the exact dog that she wanted. She was in so happy and sure now that Santa was real! What magic this time of year brings to all of us. We had as much fun watching her be excited than if we had each had a gift under that tree. It started our day out just perfect. I will remember this story and how I felt today as I put the tree away for a long time! Santa at our house has always been the spirit of giving and I feel we did that this year! Santa was still a part of our Christmas!
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