Catastrophe Averted!

I have finally, nearly finished my Christmas shopping. Usually I am done with all of my shopping by Thanksgiving, but this year has bee a little out of sync with the basement remodel and family (I know, I will give it up already...you have already heard enough about all of that!) I only have to buy for my parents, one brother and all of our friends and neighbors. So yes, we are very nearly done (Loud laugh from the peanut gallery.)

I thought that I was SOOOO clever by hiding our gifts in the garage. Our garage is absolutely jam packed with all of the stuff that we had in our basement so, I couldn't imagine that the kiddos would be in there. Well, I have snoops for kids. We were getting ready to go somewhere and the kids were in the car. I had to run into the garage to grab an extra car seat for one of the kids friends and before I knew it, there was Kyra, standing in the garage staring at one of her Christmas gifts.

Not only did she find a gift, she found her Mack Daddy, Holy Cow gift! Ok, so in real life adult terms, a pack of Barbie furniture is not that amazing but, she REALLY wanted it. Besides, it came in a GIANT box. It had to be the main gift.

So, here I am stuck with this dilemma. What do I do??? She has seen it. I can't give it to her from Santa. How do you explain that Santa stores gifts in your garage. What does he do? Stop by your house, rummage through your garage, find the gifts, stuff them in a sack and then go down the chimney to put them under the tree? That doesn't make sense (However Santa is a guy, he would find the hard way to do something haha.)

Then I thought that I could give it to her from us. That kind of takes the bang out of the whole surprise thing. Plus, the box is so big that she would know what it was if it was just idley sitting under the tree.

After much debate, this is what we have decided (Cheery upbeat Duh Duh music here) we are going to give it to her from the elf. Since we have had our cute little Jingles the Elf hanging around the house, we have decided to give each of the kiddos a gift from the elf. We are going to leave a note from him saying that he was very happy on how good they have been (haha) and all that they have done to help their mom out and that he is leaving a gift to them from him. I even found that I had already bought Christmas paper that said "Jingle Bells" on it.

I know that this is not a great solution but what do you do??? I am just glad that we may have found a back up plan. Oh, and since she found her gifts, I have since wrapped EVERYTHING and it is ready to put under the tree. Even the Santa gifts that are usually not wrapped until Christmas Eve are packaged up and hidden under a blanket in the top of my closet. Cross your fingers that this plan will work.