Glowing Christmas

I've mentioned in other posts that Hubby hails from southern Mississippi. His grandparents and a few aunts, uncles, cousins still live there. A couple of Christmas's ago, we had decided to make the 500 mile trip to spend Christmas with them. This would be the first Christmas we had spent down there in 5 years. It would be "T"'s first Christmas there, and Hubby's granddad's last Christmas with us.

To be prepared for the trip, I had wrapped all of the gifts from Santa and they were hidden in my room. The kids each had a gift from their daddy and me that we gave them before we left. I had taken the time to wrap them late because we had gotten them Gameboy Advances to play on the trip and I made sure they were charged and ready. Getting ready to leave that night (so the kids would sleep some on the way down), we loaded the kids in the car and Hubby and I brought out all of Santa's gifts and placed them under the tree. We didn't have the space in the car to take all of the gifts with us, not to mention bring those back plus the gifts they received from family, so we took a couple of gifts from Santa along and a few things for their stockings. We told the kids on Christmas morning that Santa had let us know that they had gifts under our tree here, waiting on them when they got back. One of those gifts under the tree that year was a glow-in-the-dark Doodle Bear for "K".

"K" had been talking about Doodle Bears since they had came out earlier that year. I hadn't realized the one that I picked up was glow-in-the-dark until we got ready to leave that night. Hubby turned out all the lights and this one package "glowed" under the tree. We turned the lights back on for me to discover which gift it was and for me to determine what was actually in it. That's when we realized the bear glowed. We laughed at how it was strong enough to glow through the wrapping paper, locked the doors behind us and started the 8 hour trip.

Now to today. "K" decided earlier in the year that she was too big for a night light now and slept better in total darkness. She has a light in there, but only for when friends sleep over. I put her to bed last night, turned on her fan, turned out her light, gave her kisses and went to leave the room and stopped. I spent a moment focusing on a light that shouldn't have been in there. That darn bear was glowing on the foot of her bed and realized that I never noticed it being there before I turned out the lights. Apparently the bear is still going strong, despite repeated washings. I left it there and said goodnight to "K".