Oh Oh Oh No.. Santa Made a BooBoo!

Author: Amy Armitage

Yes.. I’m a Christmas fanatic. I love the tradition and magic of Christmas time and the fact that my boys aged 9 and 12 still pretend to believe..

.. for me.

So Christmas Eve we went through the whole routine, laid out the Xmas sacks and Santa snacks (thanks to Joe who gave me cookies on Friday). We had eggnog and a special chair that even had a sign on it.

Watch out Santa. This was a TRAP! Ya see.. my son Jake decided he would finally prove to me (lol) once and for all that Santa isn’t real. He walked me over to the table and pointed to a note he had left for Santa, along with a pair of psychedelic (pronounced soy-car-delic in Australian) glasses. If they were gone in the morning, then Santa is real.

My first thought was “Oh crap.. I’m gonna have to hide these because when the jig is up I know he’s going to be asking for those back”.

We said goodnight and laid awake watching TV in bed, constantly nudging each other to stay awake until there were no more sounds coming from them.

Like a military mission we grabbed our color coded (yes.. I’m an organization freak) bags of gifts and wearing only socks we leapt across the hallway (I was whispering “GO GO GO!”) and we started filling the stockings and laying out the gifts.

The last few days everyone has been teasing me about the whole color coded gift thing, but there is a reason. It’s so come Christmas morning when we’re at the peak of the unwrapping frenzy that we know who each gift is for and who it is from. Baxter our dog even had his own colors..

We got the pressies placed around the room, munched on cookies, drank warm eggnog and removed the glasses and the note from the table.

Their XBox had died a few months back, so rather than get them a 360 we just picked up a pre loved one so they could still play the games they had. The kicker gift.. the one my hubby and I were excited about was the PS2 and [insert angelic music] GUITAR HERO 2! Wireless guitars with stands and everything!

I was hopping up and down impatiently waiting for Jay to set up the XBox when I hear “OH F*&K IT”

“Uh oh.. What’s wrong honey?”

“I lost a lead. There’s no lead for the XBox into the TV”

“OH sheesh are you serious? You don’t have one laying around in the garage or something?”

“No.. it’s not something you just have on hand Ames”

“OH bugger bugger bugger. What are we going to do?”

At that moment I had to wonder how many parents around the world were cussing and stressing because of missing parts and broken toys..

“Maybe Santa can give them something else. What about the…”

“NO”

“Ok how ’bout the..”

“NO”

“Ok then he can give them the..”

“NO! Santa is NOT taking credit for the PS2! I’m sick of Santa getting the credit for all the cool stuff. He waltzes in here once a year and hands out all the neat presents and is the best thing since sliced bread in their eyes.. So this year we are giving the BEST pressy! Santa made a mistake. I’ll write them a letter explaining it”

And that’s exactly what I did (in unrecognizable hand writing). Santa is a flake.. a stuff up.. He didn’t check that his load was secure and Mrs Claus didn’t wrap the gift properly and apparently somewhere over China the lead fell out. There was simply no way to recover it.

We went to bed and around 4.30am I got up, made coffee, walked round the house, made loud banging sounds.. ANYTHING to get them all out of BED!

COME ON! Who sleeps in on Christmas morning? Helloooooooooo?

I went into our bedroom and “accidentally” dropped a shoe on the wood floor.

“Oh hey.. you’re awake.. wanna hang out?”

lol..

“Ames it’s freaken 4.30am! Come back to bed”

“No way.. it’s on like Donkey Kong!”

So Jay got up and lit a fire, we had more coffee and then I grabbed the video camera and started slamming doors. I sat in the dark on the floor outside their rooms with the video camera paused ready for them..

YAAAAAAY!!!! I could hear some sounds. They were finally awake. They came out and were confronted with an over excited mother and a video camera slammed in their faces. I body blocked them both and wouldn’t let them walk through until they showed me the same level of enthusiasm I was displaying..

“SAY IT BOYS!”

[mumble mumble]

“COME ON!”

“Merry Christmas Mum.. Can we pass?”

“Say it with love and a ho ho ho!”

“Ho ho ho.. Merry Christmas.. now?”

“ONE MORE TIME!”

At this stage I know I sound manic but really.. this is a once a year moment for me and I love to tease them and increase their anticipation levels..

“MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!”

.. and with that they wrestled me and ran into the lounge room only to find out that Santa spazzed out..

.. BUT MUM AND DAD ROCK!!!

They LOVED their gifts and accepted Santa’s explanation without question. Jay and I are enjoying Guitar Hero more than them and every night when they go to sleep we pull out our their guitars and rock the house!

I hope your Christmas was just as.. interesting ;)