My mom would always tell us that we couldn't get up on Christmas morning until 6:00. My brothers were always up hours before that. They would have everything scoped out around the Christmas tree, and by the time they came and woke us to see, they could tell us exactly which gift was for who. Without looking at tags. But because we weren't supposed to be up, we thought we needed to be sneaky. We would spend weeks, whenever my parents were gone, trying to find ways to sneak up the stairs without them squeaking. We would try different things, and the person staked out in my parents bedroom would tell us if they heard us or not. But, by Christmas morning, it didn't matter. The boys would come wake us, we would go upstairs and look around. We would sit around tree for a while and watch the clock. And, at 5:00 we would decide it was close enough to 6:00 and send the little kids to wake mom and dad up.
One year, like a good mom will do, my mom had us cleaning our rooms on Christmas eve, with the threat that we couldn't open our presents if our rooms weren't clean. Well, Christmas morning we got up as usual and checked out the presents around the tree. Me and Renae and Sherry all had identical packages. What could it be? Well, me and Renae didn't get to find out. My mom came in and really sent us to our room to finish cleaning it before we could open our gifts. We sat in our room, cleaning, of course, and crying and complaining that we were cleaning yesterday, and Sherry told mom that we weren't and now Sherry got to open her presents and we couldn't. Well, we finished cleaning our room, and we did get to open our presents. But, Sherry already opened hers, so we both knew what we got. Magic Curl Barbie. (Just like Sherry.) And, I don't think it was quite the same to sit there and open our gifts by ourselves, without dad passing them around. I don't think my mom ever had a problem getting to clean for Christmas again.
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