This morning my friend Jennifer held her annual wrapping party. It's a morning or evening where about 5 or 6 of us meet at her house, have snacks and wrap all our Christmas presents. It's more fun to do it together, we get to ooohh and ahhh over each other's gifts and then I don't end up in the freezing and smelly beer shack at night wrapping gifts. The wrapping party is much more pleasant. So this morning I loaded up all of our stuff, hid it in the van, dropped the kids at my parents, wrapped our gifts at the party and hid them at my parents when I picked up the kids. Except the few things for my in-laws and the kids letters to Santa. Which Miss E found this afternoon. Oops.
About a week ago, the kids wrote letters to Santa and put stamps on them and put them in the mailbox to mail them. I then snuck out before the mail carrier came, picked up the letters and put them with our unwrapped Christmas presents since I haven't yet figured out a good or private enough place to keep them. Hence, they ended up at the wrapping party but then they ended up in the bag with presents for my in-laws to come home. Then I forgot they were there and asked Miss E to put those presents under the tree. Yeah. I did. She pulls out the Santa letters and (you may remember I just told her yesterday that it was OK she didn't sit on Santa's lap since she sent him a letter and she would still get presents for Christmas) :
Miss E: Mommy, oh no! Why are the Santa letters in here?
Me: (flustered and stalling) Oh no........ how did they get there?
Miss E: We mailed them. In the mail box.
Me: (more flustered and stalling) Ummmmmm.....I don't know how they got in there (seriously, I still had nothing at this point)
Miss E: We mailed them. What happened?
Me: (only thing I could come up with) Ohhh... Daddy said he was going to copy them and maybe he forgot to put them back in the mailbox (yes, the old blame-it-on-Daddy, but really, I had NOTHING and I was watching the innocent belief in Santa drain out of her). Let's call him and see if that's what happened.
Miss E: Why would he copy them? (looking at me as if she knows I'm full of sh*t)
I then call Peter, whisper to him what happened and then pretend to have a loud conversation regarding the letters and how he forgot to mail them after they were copied. I wrote "overnight" on the envelopes, promised her I would take them to the post office tomorrow and that they would still make it there on time. Then I asked her not to tell Mr. T so he "wouldn't worry". I think she bought it, and the letters are again hidden away, for real this time.
All I can say, is I'm not proud. I know this is probably our last year of total Santa belief and it kills me that I was almost the one who screwed it up. Also, a little bit not proud of the blaming Daddy thing but in my defense, I'm not really good under pressure and I couldn't very well say Ginger got them out of the mailbox and chewed them up. All in all I know she is a smart girl and has an inkling about Santa but, as they say in english class, she has a willing suspension of disbelief. I hope I hope I hope we have a few more years of Santa. Or at least that I won't be the one who kills it.
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