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Old 07-18-2017, 10:06 PM
  #68  
Sleepy Hollow
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Join Date: Jul 2016
Location: Oregon
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Last one for tonight...

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As I mentioned earlier, I was one of five kids.

Every Christmas, my parents would disappear into their room for a while and wrap Christmas presents. They'd spread this out over several nights.

We'd wait in the living room, and they would call us to their door and hand over a few presents. Somewhere on the wrapping paper, my dad would hide a name. If there was a tree with ornaments, the name might be hidden with a letter in each ornament. Or it might be along the runner of Santa's sleigh, or inside a snowflake... The oldest would get to look first, and then pass it to the next oldest without saying the name they found. Or, if there were enough presents handed out at once, we'd each get to start with a present. Once we had all found a name, we compared the name. More than once we had to send a present back because we had found two different names-- because mom and dad reused the wrapping paper every year!

Once we all agreed that we had found just one name, the present went under the tree until Christmas morning. We weren't allowed to "sort" the presents, so the search for names would happen again on Christmas, until we each had a present to open, one at a time.

They didn't worry about making sure we all had the same number of presents, but they would try to get them somewhat close.

It made for a fun Christmas morning of opening presents, even when there weren't many, and then dad would make omelets for everyone.

I hid each of the five kids' names on the present (although I blocked them out for posting online). I even have one ornament where the name is scribbled out, because of course it's used wrapping paper!
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