Discovered

This past Wednesday was Saint Nick’s Day. The night before, my husband and I rushed our girls off to bed as early as we could so that we could devote proper time to stocking-stuffing. After we filled their stockings with treats and goodies, I decided to write the girls a note on behalf of ol’ Saint Nick himself to acknowledge the girls’ (ah-hem) good behavior and further encourage the continuation of such. I fumbled through the kitchen for a few minutes, looking for a decent piece of paper on which to write the note. I finally gave up and headed for our office to grab a piece of computer paper.

Our office is located at the very front of our house, to the left of our foyer. Our front door has a long skinny window that runs the length of the door. As I was walking down the hall towards the front of the house to retrieve the piece of paper, I saw the very certain silhouette of a man in a hooded sweatshirt on our front porch doing something clearly suspicious. The second I saw him, he ducked out of sight. Being the chicken poop that I am, I followed suit and immediately ducked into our office, to the left of that door. I didn’t even want to look out again in fear of what I might find.

In a whispered scream, I called for my husband and told him someone was on our porch. It was after 9pm, so it was obviously dark out, and no one was ringing our doorbell. This person was clearly up to no good. My husband was skeptical of what I had seen and asked if I was sure it wasn’t just our Christmas lights, which are a set of big colored stars that twinkle and flash randomly. I thought for a second that maybe he was right, that maybe I had imagined what I had seen. Maybe it was just a shadow of our lighted snowman combined with the house lights and my wild imagination. But I still refused to come out of the office until my husband checked it out.

My husband was wearing his usual nighttime attire, which consists merely of his boxer briefs. He proceeded to open our front door to check out the scene without putting on clothes, which meant either a) he really did not believe me that someone was out there so he wasn’t concerned about being seen nearly neckid or b) he was too scared of what he would find to remember he was nearly neckid.

He looked around from the safety of our first step, came back in, and then looked out our window again. He then spotted the hooded stranger scurrying throughout our yard, obviously trying to go unseen. And then my husband recognized this person was actually one of our very best friends. I then looked out the window and we both spotted something red in the middle of our yard that our friend was messing with.

My husband opened up our front door and said, Dude, what are you doing??

Our friend flashed a guilty and surrendering smile and then turned to his handiwork, which was an inflatable Santa Claus that he was trying to stake down and blow up.

Apparently, he and his wife had devised this plan to set up, inflate, and leave this 8-foot airblown Santa Claus in our front yard without us knowing, as both a prank and a Saint Nick’s Day surprise. When I had seen our friend on our porch, he had apparently been trying to find an outlet for Santa. If our friend had not been discovered, we would have woken up to find this “present” in our yard, not knowing who had done it. I would have never in a million years guessed it was this friend. He and his wife have a newborn baby, so I wouldn’t have imagined that they had the time or energy to even think up such a prank. I personally thought the whole idea was absolutely hysterical and wished that I hadn’t found it out. I also thought it was incredibly sweet and thoughtful and reminded me of how incredibly lucky we are to have such fun and wonderful friends.

His wife, who had been driving the getaway car, soon pulled up to discover that her husband had failed in this Santa-dumping attempt. Apparently, they had tried the same stunt on his parents last year and got caught in the act as well. His wife came into our house, pumpkin seat and infant in tow, clearly disappointed with her husband’s failure at being a delinquent.

If it had been any other night, he would have been successful. I am usually in bed by 9pm, watching my TiVoed shows for the day. I rarely go into our office anymore, especially that late, but this night I needed paper to write the Saint Nick note. Little did I know that I would catch ol’ Saint Nick himself. The four of us had a great laugh about it all, but my husband and I are already planning retaliation.

So I wrote the Saint Nick note that I had intended but added a PS for the girls to go look outside at our front yard to see what else Saint Nick had left. The girls were wowed by the surprise in the morning. My four-year-old thought it was Santa’s “stamp” that he had been to our house. She then surmised that she and her sister must’ve been the only good kids in the neighborhood because no one else on our street was left an 8-foot Santa blow-up doll in their front yard. Yep, my girls are that special.

Later that morning my girls went to my parents’ house for the day. My mother has stockings at their house for them, so she also stuffed them with goodies for Saint Nick’s Day.

My four-year-old pulled a doll from her stocking and with a confused look on her face said, I have this one. If Santa knows and sees EVERYTHING, why didn’t he know that I already had this one??

This kid is too smart for her own good. I have a feeling she is going to discover the secret of Santa prematurely and miss out on all the fun -- much like how my husband and I did with our new Giant Airblown Santa. And like him, when it comes to Santa, we're also just full of a lot of hot air.