Secret Santa

Our family has been receiving gifts from a secret Santa for the past 6 nights (they are doing the 12 days of Christmas). Lily is thrilled each night when Santa knocks on our door and leaves us a gift. Steve and I are astonished at the amount of thought and preparation and money spent on each gift. Some Secret Santa out there has been heavily generous to our family, for which we are thankful. It touches my heart to know of the sacrifices someone is going through to make 12 days before Christmas a magical experience for us. Here's what we've received the first few days:

Day 1: A Fisher Price Little People Nativity (both Lily and Amara LOVE THIS!)
Day 2: A Crayola Art set (markers, colored pencils, paints, crayons, papers, glue, and a carrying case), AND a Giant Disney Princess Coloring Book (Each page is a poster). Lily has already colored/painted 3 posters.
Day 3: 2 Puzzles, one is good quality wood and has farm animals that make their corresponding animal noise when you put it in place. The other is a puzzle perfect for Lily that has different magnetic shapes that you arrange on the magnet board to make pictures or designs; it came with several pages that slide in that have pictures you can place the magnets on top of. These are a huge hit. Amara loves to make animal sounds, and Lily is so smart and makes beautiful pictures and designs with the magnets.
Day 4: A Complete Gingerbread house Kit (we're excited to put it together for home evening tomorrow.)
Day 5: Family Movie Night! A bucket of popcorn, a box of Red Vines, a box of Starbursts, and 5 DVDs (Ratatouille, Ratatouille Cooking, Nim's Island, Anastasia, and Pay It Forward). We ate all the popcorn and candy as we watched Ratatouille with the kids. Lily loved it, and the next day she was using the Little People from her Nativity set and pretending they were her rats. She was carrying them around with her to the breakfast table and stuff.
Day 6: Family Breakfast: A package of thick-sliced Hickory Bacon, A heavy sack of pancake mix, Mrs. Butterworths syrup, and a giant canister of Stephens Hot Chocolate. Because I was speaking in church today, I didn't have time to pull off the entire breakfast, but we did enjoy some of the bacon with our cereal, this morning. We're planning on using the rest for dinner on Thursday night (that's the night we usually do a hearty breakfast for dinner).

Wow! We've been incredibly blessed to have such good friends around us. I wish I could say thank you to them, but it's obvious they would like to remain anonymous. I was thinking of leaving a big Thank You card for them on the 12th day. It's a wonderful gift to us as parents to see the excitement, and smiles, and joy of our children (and us as well) with each gift. I wish I could allow our secret Santa to see just how precious each gift is to us. It's more than just gifts, each night we are allowed an experience of the twinkling eyes of our children which brings such joy. It really has spread Christmas cheer out over several days, not just one day, and I am grateful for that.