Advent Calendar - Christmas Shopping

I remember it as if it were yesterday! That was the year I did all the Christmas shopping in one day and the year I truly stumped my present peepers.

I was working at our local bank at the time and my boss and I decided to spend an evening at Woodfield Mall to try to make a dent in our shopping lists. I must have had a good idea as to what I wanted to buy because by the end of the evening I was loaded down with packages and my credit card was almost too hot to hold. In fact, it had been used so often that night that at one store they had the clerk hand me the phone to verify it was really me making all those purchases!

How on earth was I to go home with all those gifts and still keep them a surprise from my preteen daughters; especially Sam who made it an annual challenge to seek out the presents before Christmas? There was no way I could walk into the house with them and keeping them in the truck would only stall the issue. My boss came to the rescue, as she was often wont to do. She offered to keep all of it at her house as long as I needed. Hah! Sam couldn't find them there and she didn't.

The gifts remained out of the house until Christmas Eve and I was able to sneak them in without being seen. That was probably the only year the girls never had a clue what they were getting until Christmas Day. I really enjoyed that year, too.