Finding Out About Santa

Hello, all! My hubby is officially home on R&R!! =D I am so, so happy to have him here with me for this short time. So, I will be blogging very little while he's here. I am going to enjoy these 2 weeks with him as much as possible. I have good news for you, though! I have some wonderful, amazing bloggers lined up to post for me while I'm gone! Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Goodnight Moon! I absolutely love her and her blog. I was thrilled when she agreed to blog for me! Without further ado, here she is!

Growing up as a kid I loved Christmas.

What kid didn’t?

I mean seriously?

Everything about it is peaceful, pure and beautiful.

Of course I always knew what the true meaning of Christmas is, but I also knew everything there was to know about Santa Claus.

My Christmas Eve ritual before I would head to bed for the night, was writing Santa a letter asking him for the most important thing to me that year and leaving him milk, cookies and some carrots for his reindeer.

Let me take you back into time…..I was in the 4^th grade, so that would’ve made me 9yrs old. I was living at my grandpa’s house in Ohio with my siblings and mom, while my dad was already stationed in Quantico, VA. Thankfully my dad was able to come be with us that Christmas. I hand wrote my letter to Santa, just like I had years past. I clearly remember thanking Santa that my dad got to be back with us for Christmas, but I also CLEARLY remember asking him for a miniature doll toy that I had been wanting.

As the sun came up…so did me and all us kids. We ran out to look at all the beautifully wrapped presents and to see who had the biggest gift under the tree and what our stockings were filled with. And then my focus turned to the plate with cookie crumbs, the empty glass of milk and a letter addressed to ME! As I began to read the letter, I noticed that Santa’s writing looked a lot like my dad’s handwriting.  I was totally confused?!? Then as I looked under the tree at all the wrapped presents, I noticed that all the wrapping paper was the same wrapping paper we used to wrap presents for everyone in our family. Why would Santa use our wrapping paper when all the elves were suppose to wrap our presents in the North Pole. But the icing on the cake was when my younger sister got the miniature doll toy that I wanted AND asked for, for Christmas. That’s when all the pieces of the puzzle started to fit.

That was a really sad Christmas for me. I figured out that there wasn’t  a REAL Santa Claus. I remember defending Santa’s honor to all my classmates who didn’t believe in Santa anymore, but there I was, just one of the last kids in the 4^th grade to realize that Santa really wasn’t real. Of course my parents did a good job trying to cover up why Santa’s handwriting looked like my dads, and why all the presents were wrapped in our Christmas paper. But I knew the real truth.

Now that I’m an adult and have 4 kids of my own….I do my VERY best to keep my kids believing that Santa is real. I’d love it if they were all in their 20’s before they found out I was really Santa.

I make sure that I don’t make the same mistakes my parents did when I was a kid. When the kids write a letter to Santa, we mail it to the North Pole….when really I mail it to my best friend and she in returns answers their letter in HER handwriting and mails the letter herself but addresses the envelope from the North Pole. As for the gifts, I’ve got that covered too. I get special wrapping paper for each one of my kids. They each have their own paper so I don’t have to handwrite their names on it and them figure things out. And I always make sure that I get each of them at least one thing that they really wanted for Christmas.

How old were you when you found out about Santa?

Thanks again, Goodnight Moon! 

I'll be back with another fabulous blogger tomorrow!