One of my favorite memories is of my son when he was about 12. I am an avid reader of Harlequin romance books. We had a second hand book store up town at that time. I worked in a Christian bookstore around the corner from the second hand store. My son and his friend made a deal with the store owner to trade some of my son's baseball cards for Harlequin books. Of course I didn't know this. The boys went to the TV store and got a HUGE empty box the size of a console tv. They filled it with books. Then they used their skateboards to put under it and Nathan(my son) pulled and Jamie his friend layed on it to steady it as they pulled it down the street and around the corner to my store. LOL They asked if they could put it in the store til I closed and we would take it home. All I knew at that time was it was a HUGE box with slap dash wrapping paper on it. LOL I didn't know what was inside.
So I helped them get it in my van and we took it home. I had to wait til Christmas morning to open it. LOL When I opened it I was so shocked to see all of those books!! We counted them and those boys managed to stuff over 300 books in that box!!! It was a heartfelt moment when I saw the pride in my son's eyes when I opened that box.
I'll never forget that moment.
at that same time - I have to explain Nathan and I had this one upmanship thing going on at the time. He would try to trick or surprise me with something and I would play a trick on him. We went back and forth with this for awhile.
so the books were also in the nature of a Gotcha!
So in the store we wrapped gifts for people. My kids would help out in the store sometimes. So I had Nathan wrap a bunch of gifts for me in the back of the store. what I didn't tell him was he had wrapped his own gifts and didn't know it cause they were all in boxes. LOL That was my gotcha!