The Gay Family Blog: Merry Christmas from the Gays

Merry Christmas! I can't believe it has already come and gone. We enjoyed every minute...well some of us enjoyed every minute...our resident Scrooge enjoyed about 10 minutes. Christmas arrived while we were in Georgia for Christmas which meant no decorating for the first time ever during the first two weekends of December. Our Elf on the Shelf made his first appearance and Drew loved him. Our Elf (Jamie Elvins) was actually a lot of fun for Kevin and I. It was somewhat daunting as we had heard what a pain it was and Drew was already coming home telling us what his friends elves were doing. Jamie climbed our tree, played games, went fishing, made smores and even on his last night here brought Jesus in our nativity scene a cupcake muffin with a candle for his birthday. Drew was sad to see him go.

Telling Jamie bye on Christmas Eve

We kicked off with the school Christmas programs. Drew kept telling me he was either going to be Ironman or Spiderman in the program. After long discussions about the difference between Halloween and Christmas I was surprised to learn he really was going to be a superhero in the Christmas program. His teacher is so smart! How do you get 18 four year olds to dress up and participate? Let them wear any costume they choose. The title of the program was "Who belongs on the top of the tree." Each child got to introduce themselves and state their case, with parents looking on, as to why they should be on the tree. Drew explained "I am Ironman and I have superpowers." The teacher politely told each child they weren't qualified until the last little girl in the class who was dressed as an angel. She then went on to tell the Christmas story of the angel spreading the news of Christ and explaining why we have angels on the top of our trees. It was precious!

You can see from the picture there was a wide variety of applicants for the job!

Drew and Joe led the Lord's prayer for the class

Owen's class was just as cute. He and his friends jingled their bells happily through three songs! You can tell from the pictures he and Jack Hughes like spending their days together.

And then the big surprise! One day I will discuss in detail my ability to win the oddest raffles. We won the raffle to have Santa deliver gifts to our house on Christmas Eve. As this would have been a little hard to explain on so many levels we decided to try to find a way to share it with friends. The local children's hospital and children's homes already had Santa lined up so we convinced Santa to come to school and read a book to the class. Drew had no idea. Kevin was out of town that morning and Drew had been a little hard to deal with. In fact several times in the process of getting to school I had explained to him that mommy's get to talk to Santa. He was unfazed. When I showed up at school I pulled him from his class telling him there was someone I wanted to him to talk to. In all honesty I am pretty sure he thought I had called Kevin to the school and he was TERRIFIED. When he saw Santa I could see his brain kick in high gear - he looked at me like SERIOUSLY, you called HIM! Santa, not knowing the morning events, immediately spoke up and said "Drew, your mommy called me and asked me to come to your school." Drew literally took two steps backwards. Then Santa said "I have heard you have been a good boy." Drew immediately looked to see if I was going to object. When I didn't he was over the top excited. He was Santa's elf (Ralph) for the day. He sat by Santa and turned pages as he read the story. Owen's class came to the story time and Owen had no fears of the man in the big red suit. (Clearly having a costumed brother 90% of the time has relieved any fears of costumes for him!)

As Santa left the class he whispered something in Drew's ear. Amazingly a glove of his showed up on our tree Christmas morning to confirm his secret to Drew. He donates his entire month of December (when not getting ready for Christmas) to charities to be auctioned off. He also visits the local Children's hospitals, foster homes, preaches at the Salvation Army Christmas program and so much more. He thanked me for giving him Christmas Eve "off" this year and told me his gift to us was that he would spend that time at the local battered women's shelter. What an amazing man!