How this Scrooge won Christmas

I mentioned last week here that I've been a homesick scrooge lately.  What I didn't mention is I went through my lonely bag of Christmas things I saved from our move from Opelika. We were in such a hurry and had many mixed emotions raging during the move, that I only packed the Christmas things that had meaning to me. Two of these things were ornaments from my childhood that I had dug out of ornament storage our first Christmas together. We had tried for a few years to keep a Christmas tree, but with the cats it always ended up knocked down or the tree lights chewed up where they no longer worked. So, we have put Christmas trees on permanent hiatus.

While I was rummaging around through my Christmas bag I found my childhood ornaments and decided they were not meant for me to keep. My dad has very few if any mementos or even pictures from mine or my brother's childhood. So, I wrapped them up in tissue paper, framed a photo that also found of us in 1990 in Florida, and framed three pictures from last summer's graduation and sent them through the mail. I also send framed pictures to Buddy's parents and my Grandma.

I checked the tracking number on all three presents each day to see if they had arrived yet. When they did I called each of them to see what Santa brought them. Buddy's mom hadn't got home from work yet and no one at home was answering the phone, so we called her at work to make sure she checked the porch. Grandma had placed the tissue paper wrapped presents under the tree and was going to wait till Christmas to open them, but I convinced her she wanted to see what it was before hand. She opened each of the photos with an aw and cried by the time she got to the end of them. I told her that I wanted to make sure that if she couldn't see us for Christmas she could at least look at us. She was very glad she didn't wait till Christmas and cry in front of everyone.

Diddy (Dad) was the last one I called and he said the box was under the tree. They hadn't even opened the box it was shipped in! I told him he had to at least open the two little ones before Christmas, so they opened the box and scared the crap out of me when he said there weren't two little ones in the box. My heart sank into the pit of my belly and I just wanted to cry. Those were irreplaceable! But then Sally turned the box upside down and they slid out. Whew!

He opened up the first one to which I asked if he recognized it. He said he didn't and asked if he should. Granted, the first one was a plain gold bell that had my name inscribed and the year we they had got it, 1984. So, it was a little difficult for even my decent vision to see the words on it. But the second one...The second one was from my kindergarten year (1987). My teacher had drawn animals from our thumb prints and put them in a tiny frame. Mine was a mouse. When he opened the second ornament all I heard was "The Mouse!" and then garble, the sound like the phone fell on the floor. Y'all! I made my Diddy cry! I wasn't necessarily looking for him to cry, making him happy - totally, crying, not so much. He didn't want to open the others till Christmas, so they are still under the tree. So even though we are not going to see our families for the holidays. I totally won the daughter of the year award and this scrooge won Christmas.

I got this picture about an hour after he opened his presents.

More updates to come, so until then have a great week and blessed be.