Christmas Festivities, Day 1

Our Christmas celebration began Friday evening, lasting for 5 days! We enjoyed feasting at Applebee's compliments of Great Grandma's gift card. Somehow during that meal, Santa and his reindeer landed early at our house, dumping our stockings full of presents. How could he possibly know that Nick and Alix were leaving for California before dawn even breaks the next morning? He is so smart! There were even gifts in my stocking which is extremely uncharacteristic of Santa. Most years I help Santa with filling my beautiful sock because he's not quite on the ball. However, this year he surprised me! I just love my Santa baby...

Before we commenced with opening gifts, we planned to read the Christmas story in Luke 2. Maddie became a little confused as evidenced by the beginning of her version of the story, "It was the night before Christmas and all through the house..."

Nick, playing Santa, passed gifts to each person one by one until Alix took over his job, not satisfied with his organizational skills! There was a lot of oohing and ahhing over the gifts, hugs and kisses and Maddie hovering like a bee with a flower over whomever happened to have a gift she could assist them in opening. Each of us kept shooing the bee away, but it kept returning. The big gifts this year were a karaoke machine for Maddie, a digital camera for Alix and the big tamale Wii for Nick. That Nick had a Wii to open is a miracle story.

The Wii, like its cousins the XBox and Playstation, have been in such great demand that fanatics had been resorting to waiting in long lines for hours and even spending frigid nights outdoors just to "maybe" obtain one of these. Tony and I waited in one line the day after Thanksgiving at 7 am in hopes of purchasing the "Wii". I guess we should have brought our sleeping bags and spent the night! With 14 left at Gamestop and holding our place in line at number 16, we were doomed to be disappointed, yet we still waited "just in case". We tried Target, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart. I prayed a silly little prayer, "God, I know this is pretty trivial, but I also know that you care about the little things in our lives. All Nick wants is a Wii. Please help us find one." Sappy, I know. Even a little weird.

But, you are not going to believe what happened. I knew how God was going to answer this. He was going to allow me to be at the right place at the right time. As Christmas drew closer, I began to come up with other alternatives in case we didn't get one of these coveted items. We'll just wrap a picture of a "Wii" in a box, give it to Nick and tell him we'll get one after Christmas. This was plan B. I never had to carry out this plan because of how God orchestrated the next events. A friend of mine was also looking for this game. We had made a pact that if one of us ever came across two Wii's, we buy them both and settle up with each other later. Nope, that is not how we obtained our Wii! Actually, another friend, not even remotely desirous of this grand gift, was standing at the return counter at Target when another woman returned two Wii's. My friend, thinking they were just possibly games, enquired about them. When she discovered that they were in fact the official "Wii's", she asked, "Well, can I buy them?" After the clerk answered affirmatively, she purchased them, quickly toted them to her car and promptly called me, telling me what she had done.

To call me ecstatic would be an understatement. While traveling to Hobby Lobby to exchange money for the "gift", I called my husband, my mom and anyone who cared about this amazing answer to prayer. It certainly was not the way I had planned it to happen, but God always works in mysterious ways and usually not according to how I have it all worked out. God used a friend to answer my prayer.