'08 Christmas

This year's Christmas was more memorable for the kids considering the fact that they had so much more exposure to the celebration through their school, friends and their care taker. They had this theme and all their activities at school were based on that and after school, they had watched their care taker decorate her lawn and house with lights and decorate the tree which made them all the more excited. Last year they were not this much "informed" about Christmas, I had just bought some much needed winter dresses for them and put that in a gift bag and placed it under the tree. I had to wake them up in the morning to go and check out. But this year it was a different picture. They were literally jumping around with excitement on Christmas eve. They ordered me that I keep a glass of milk and cookies left for Santa to eat and wanted to go out and sow the "magic" food for the reindeer that they had made at school on the lawns. I had a hard time to calm them down and make them go to sleep. I could relate to them in a way, Christmas to them was like Deepavali to me when I was young. That was the only morning when I would be up before my mom. Few days before the Christmas I overheard the girls talking "Divya , you know what , last year Santa did not wrap our gifts, he just gave it in a bag which I did not like.." "I know Sandhya thats because we were only half good kids to mommy, this year I wish he wraps it in a box with a nice bow.." .. and so I had to take all the pain to shop for nice shiny gift wrapper and satin bows and sat down and wrapped the gifts I had bought them after they slept. Of course the expression they had in their face and the screaming they did in the morning after spotting the gift does not compare to any thing in this world, to put it in Divya's words "in this whole wide world".