As previously stated, mom loved to get presents, she was a pro at getting presents for us, when we were standing right there! Believe it or not, we wouldn't even see them until Christmas morning. Well one day Mollie happened to see mom pick something up she could tell that it was for her and she asked mom about it, of course mom lied and said that it wasn't for her. Well Mollie got hers for being snoopy before Christmas. No joke, mom put this present, which was a necklace, inside a 4x4 box, but not before she duck taped the necklace. She then put that box inside a shoe box, after she wrapped it in duck tape. Then she put that duck tapped shoe box inside a small appliance box, she then duck tapped that box. And you get the idea, this routine went on until she had duck tape wrapped this necklace, Russian Doll style, in about a dozen boxes. Oh the hilarity on Christmas morning. Our routine was to have the oldest to youngest open one present at a time, when Mollie got that present it was taking her too long to open for us to wait so we bypassed her several times. By the time she got to the necklace she was in tears, and mom said "That will teach you to snoop around Christmas time".
Another great present story is, the boys, John, Mike, Dusty and Richard all wanted motorcycles for Christmas one year. Well obviously they weren't going to get them, but in the nature of mom, she never told them that. Christmas morning we came into the living room with the sight of what appeared to be a motorcycle covered with a sheet. Needless to say when the boys saw that they were more that ecstatic, they all tore the sheet away to find a wonderful sight of more than a dozen 12 packs of pepsi fashioned to look like a motorcycle. As ecstatic as they were, their sorrow didn't even come close! However, everyone else got a big laugh out of it!
No one was immune to mom's present tricks. I won't lie, her trick on me had me almost in tears! It was normal sized box, not too big and not too small but it was very heavy. When I got it unwrapped all that I could see were cans of salmon, this was at the point in my life when I hated fish, well I started pulling them, hoping that this wasn't my present, well the further inside the box I got the harder it was to hold back my tears. I am not joking, every can I pulled out was salmon! Finally I felt something very soft at my finger tips, I pulled out the last can and saw what my present was. A great purple purse! My tears then turned into tears of joy. I knew that mom knew me better than to get me a box of canned salmon. Mom then said "I didn't realize that all the cans were of salmon! That makes it so much better!"
Some of the greatest memories are of getting our tree. We always went the weekend of Thanksgiving and it was always a day trip. It always took forever because mom wanted the perfect tree! And by perfect I mean it couldn't have any physical damage, therefore whenever we went tension was always high, mainly because John was in a hurry and dad was doing everything he could to make mom as happy as possible, he didn't care that we had practically hiked the entire Pine Valley mountain. Because of mom's bad health we had to take a 4-wheeler for her, so her and dad never actually hiked so it didn't feel like that long to them. For some reason one year we didn't go to Pine Valley went just by our house, this year we just took 4-wheelers, by this time mom couldn't even get onto a one. Dad's solution..... get a trailer and put her wheelchair on that, his name for it? Mom's chariot, we have a picture but I have no idea where it is at!
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