The holiday is now over, and I survived! From my last post, I challenged you to send me some holiday cheer. Two people did, and their stories are great 
Thank you so much! Your words really did help me.
Let me share them with everyone.
From Julia:
The Christmas Eve before my youngest sister was born, my other sister and I were getting a bit impatient with our dad. He was taking forever to get ready and our mom kept giving us chores to do to keep us busy (we were 8 & 11 yrs old btw). He finally called down saying that he was giving up and he’d be there in a second. My sister and I raced to the table, our mom waddled over (she was about 8 months pregnant) and we all sat down and waited. And waited. And waited. We finally hear him coming down the stairs.
He’s wearing a bright red suit (not a Santa outfit, an actual suit!) and has half of his beard shaved off. Think… a mash-up of Two Face and Cruella De Ville. The other half with the beard? Covered in white goo.
My mom gives him this horrified look and asks what on earth he was doing. He said he’d tried to colour his beard white so it’d be a real Santa beard. But it didn’t look right. And the white goo wouldn’t wash off. So he tried to shave it off. He only got half of it shaved off before he got so annoyed with the clogged razor that he gave up.
And so we ate our Christmas meal in fits of giggles. It didn’t help that every time any one of us looked at our dad, we’d just burst into laughter because he kept pulling funny faces whenever he caught us.
It’s just really too bad that we don’t have any photos of it. I’d share one if I could!
From Alyssa:
My Dad’s birthday is a few days before Christmas, and this always gets overshadowed by Christmas. So, one year when I was little (3 or 4 I think) my family decided to throw him a surprise party.
One day I found out, and my mom told me to not tell my dad, or I would be in trouble! Of course, Christmas Eve comes around and his whole family is together for their yearly party, and I act as the distraction.
I tell my dad I want to show him some toys I was playing with, and take him to the basement. My dad was polite, but wanted to get back to the party – I was failing as a distraction! So, I said “You can’t go back! They’re planning a surprise!” When I realized I had spilled the beans I freaked out and started crying, saying that Santa wouldn’t come because I was bad and ruined he surprise. So my Dad said that we would pretend that I hadn’t, and we went back upstairs and no one was the wiser.
Until I went to my mom and told her “I ruined the surprise but it’s ok because Daddy pretended to be surprised!”
I heard this story from my mom, so I’m not sure how true it is… but I always smile when I hear it.
Thank you so very much Julia and Alyssa!
