Maya and Maria: The Christmas that almost wasn't.....

Since I've been in a bah-humbug mood all season, I had yet to wrap the first gift when my family showed up on Christmas Eve for our celebration. My mother lives in C, along with my brother and his family, and C is about 1 1/2 hours from my house. My mother's house, in particular, is about 1 hour 40 minutes or so from my house. We invited mom to stay with us the week of Christmas as we certainly didn't want her to be alone this year. So after supper, I tell my brother I need a few minutes to wrap some gifts before we start the gift exchange. They tend to Maya while I disappear upstairs for about 15 minutes. I came back downstairs and tell my mom that I cannot find Maya's gift from her, and I wanted Maya to open it while my family was here. I looked several more times that evening and really get worried, as there are two other Santa gifts that I got along with the gift from my mom. I had other things at home to give her, but these were 3 of her main items, and I was to the point of tears when I still couldn't find them around 8:00 that evening. I even left to see if I could find ANY store still open that late. Walgreen's was the ONLY store open, and they were packed, and all the toys were quite picked over, so no luck there. So I go home and try to make do with the pitiful offering of stocking stuffers and a few other measly gifts for Maya, all while fighting the tears.

Finally, around 10:00, it hits me ... I remember where the gifts are. I bought them when in C visiting mom earlier in the month, and I remembered putting them in HER closet to hide them from Maya. Oy! I call my brother, who is back home by this time and ask him to ride out to mom's house (only about 3 miles for him) and see if they are still in her closet. Sure enough, there they are! So I tell Frank I am on my way down, as I cannot STAND not getting them for Maya to have Christmas morning.

My nephew meets me in CL, which is about 40 minutes from mom's, so it saves me a good amount of time. But I still do not get back home until 1:00 a.m. Chrismtas morning with the gifts. I put them out and head on to bed, a happy Mama! I do realize that Christmas is not all about the gifts, and that Maya would not have had a clue if they had not been found, and she would still have been ecstatic to have the few other things we had for her. So this trip was really more for me than for her. But I truly would have been devastated. Christmas was saved .....

This gift was not in Columbia, so we still had her big item at home. But I wasn't about to go outside at 6:30 a.m. when Maya woke up to find this Santa gift ... we waited until E's mom was able to come by, and she "found" it outside from Santa!