best night ever

It's December 1st! The kids have been waiting for this day. The first day of the 25 days of Christmas.... an incredibly awesome idea I borrowed from the fabulous Andrea from a peek inside the fishbowl. I put a bit of my own spin on the idea and invented Elwood, the Elf who's in charge of Christmas fun. Every night Elwood leaves a note telling us what that day's activity is.

Thursday is fright night around here. Abby has her riding lesson, it's an hour long, but it equals about two hours at the stable once it's all said and done. By the time we get home it's headed for 7 and nobody has had dinner. Abby made sure the basket was in place before we left for riding, but I didn't have a chance to get the note into it before we left.

The kids came home to an empty basket, so we tidied and had dinner while the two of them speculated when he would show up and Abby checked on the basket every three seconds.

I work incredibly hard at making things into events for my kids. I want them to have warm and fuzzy memories of their childhood. I want them to always know how important I think this family is because I know..... well I just know. So I do things like the 25 days of Christmas, and sleepover movie nights, family fun night, and family game night. And I know.... I know, it means just as much to them as it does to me, even if they don't realize that it is me.

Some time after dinner as Mike and the kids were cleaning up I slipped away to write "the note", the one from Elwood that said how much he'd missed them, answered a question Abby had asked in a note she'd written and left them some hot chocolate and instructions to write their letters to Santa.

You guys, when Abby saw that note in the basket, she was overwhelmed to the point of tears. She couldn't even bring herself to read the note. She just grabbed onto Mike and I and hugged as hard as she could. You see earlier that evening she'd told me that she's been thinking about Elwood on the bus, how she thought maybe Elwood was me, but then she realized that no, he had to be real. She's nine, so she's just on the brink of figuring it out, to be honest I think she probably already knows on some level, but isn't willing to own it just yet.

I'm not going to lie to you fine folks, I got teary watching her. It's definitely up there as one of my top five parenting moments. One I will replay over and over. I'm pretty sure she will too.