Family Sneaks Up on Clever Christmas Night Spies

Every year my sister and I would wake up in the middle of the night to see what Santa brought us. And then we would sneak back to bed and go back to sleep. We woke up early still in the morning all excited about what Santa had brought! We didn't think anyone else knew about our secret Christmas mission. Until one year . . .

We thought we were so clever. We would dutifully put out a plate of cookies for Santa and get ready for bed. We would go to sleep but something would wake us in the middle of the night. We would make sure our parents were sleeping as well as our baby brother and then we would creep out of bed. Our bedroom was at the end of the hall way. We checked to see if we could hear our parents stirring and then tip toed across their door way (even though their door was shut). We then paused as we had to check to see if our baby brother was sound asleep. Hearing him sleep, we tip toed past his room and then make it to the end of the hallway at the top of the stairs. There we could see our Christmas tree all lit up in the living room. And we could see that Santa had come as well!

Having past the hurdles of getting by our family's bedrooms, we scrambled down the stairs and immediately start looking at what Santa brought. We dismissed that our older brother was in the basement sleeping. He wouldn't know we were looking at what all Santa brought.

We carefully dumped what was in our stockings, oohing and aahing and giggling and squealing as quietly as possible over all that was in our stockings. We then placed everything back in our stockings just as we had found it so that nobody knew we had an early peek. Then, we couldn't help ourselves, but we had to see what our baby brother got, too! So, out came everything in his stocking. Satisfied with what he got and that he didn't get anything better than us, we carefully put everything back into his stocking. Then we looked at all that Santa brought, carefully reading all about the toys and games that were in their boxes. We might speculate what else we were getting since we now knew what Santa brought and then after admiring our gifts a little while longer, we turned to leave.

Sitting on our living room couch was our mother and older brother video taping us!

We were caught red-handed. We were embarrassed but our mom and older brother were good sports. They got a video taped confession out of us and then we were likely told to go back to sleep. We still got to open all of our gifts Christmas morning and our goodies in our stockings didn't turn into charcoal in those couple of hours between our secret mission and Christmas morning festivities. However, our middle-of-the-night Santa gift previews ended. At least this was the last time I remember really trying to get a good look at what Santa had brought us in the middle of the night. Now, with three children of my own, I wonder when they'll start their midnight adventures to see what Santa brought. I guess I better have the video camera ready!