Christmas

The girls in their new Christmas dresses.


The kids in their new jammies.

This Christmas was wonderful and full of surprises. Our family received one humbling surprise Christmas Eve. Jeff got up early that morning to play basketball at the church. I was trying to catch a few more minutes of shut eye when at 7:30 in the morning I was woken by a loud knock and door bell ring. I jumped out of bed and thought, jeez, this is a little loud and early to deliver a neighbor gift (we had just taken ours around a day before). When I got to the door I peered out of our little window at the top of our door (sometimes it's nice being tall). I saw an unknown man running and climbing into a waiting truck. I opened the door slightly to peak outside and saw 4 large packages on our door step. My first thought was that this must be a mistake. There are lots of houses that look just like ours and they must have delivered it to ours on accident. When I opened the door and brought the packages in, all in wrapping paper, I noticed a note on top that said to the Payne Family. I was in shock. Who could this have been from? I opened the note and it was a receipt. It was a receipt for a Wii!! I was totally in awe at the generosity and had no idea who it could be from. Along with it, there were three more presents. I tried to call Jeff but he didn't answer his phone because he was still playing. About 8 calls later, he called back and said he was on his way home. I showed him the gifts, and his shock at seeing them, affirmed to me that he was as surprised as I was. To this day we are still amazed that someone would be that generous with us and give our family an extra gift at Christmas. We would love to be able to do the same for someone else in the future.


The next surprise was one I cooked up. A couple years ago I was called to be girls camp director and in young womens we made friendship quilts. Jeff loved to steal mine from me, and every now and then, make a comment about me making one for him. I decided that Christmas time would be a great time to do it. I wanted to keep it a secret though. One day I went to the store and picked out some fabric. Brock, Hayley and Paige came with me and Brock helped pick the colors. I swore them to secrecy and threatened their lives if they told (not really, but you get the picture). After cutting the squares for Jeff's blanket I realized that I had extra fabric and thought it would be nice to make one for the boys too, and if I did that, then I would need to make the girls one as well. So, one blanket turned into five! I am a novice sewer, so I had my doubts that this could be done, and in secret to boot. I had to be very sneaky and luckily Paige wasn't all that observant. When I bought the girl fabric she asked me what it was for and I said "Oh, I just want to try something with it". I didn't work on the girl ones in front of Paige, and the boys ones looked similar enough to Jeff's that no one noticed. I kept telling the kids that they had to hurry to bed so I could make Dad's blanket, or I couldn't watch the movie with them because I had to make Dad's blanket, or stay out in the snow a little longer because I'm trying to make Dad's blanket. Fortunately for me, Jeff put in a few more hours at work because of the holidays, and was playing basketball two nights a week. I was quite often running around the house hiding evidence when I heard the garage door open. As the blankets were forming they grew bigger and were more difficult to hide. At one point I had the girls blankets under their beds and the boys were in my linen closet. One night Jeff told me he was going to go swimming in the morning and the boys blanket were on the shelf by the towels. I had to send him downstairs on an errand so I could move them quickly before he found them in the morning. Making the blankets was fun for me, and keeping them a secret was challenging, but rewarding. The kids did great not telling Jeff and he never caught me making them. I loved watching them see their blankets Christmas morning. Jeff was happy, and the boys were shocked that they had a blanket too. I think it was my favorite part of Christmas this year. Now to think of a fun surprise for next year.



Jeff and the kids posing in their new blankies.