Sleepover with Grandma

Michelle Schneider

3 years ago

sleepover As a child, our Christmas holiday was always made more special because Grandma Is would come and spend the night with us. It always felt like such a special treat to have Grandma sleepover. Each year, Lisa and I would take turns hosting Grandma in our room on our trundle bed.

I would wake up early in the morning, although I have no idea how I did this as I’m a notoriously heavy sleeper. The first thing I would look at was my yellow Christmas stocking hanging on my dresser across the room to see if it was still flat or filled to the brim with treats. If the stocking was full, it meant that Santa had finally made it.

If grandma was in my room, I would sneak out of bed as quietly as I could and empty my stocking to see what I got. Usually, there was 1 apple and 1 orange in the stocking that I just ignored. Then there would be a bag of mixed nuts, trail mix, or dried fruit of some kind, and finally a small bag of candy. One year mom tried to give us sugar-free candy and both Lisa and I decided “Never Again” as it gave us such bad gas! Finally, there was always 1 little present in the stocking that Lisa and I were allowed to open before the treasure fest began, but I never opened it without Lisa being present.

Before waking Lisa, I would next sneak down to the living room in the basement to check out the piles of presents under the tree. Lisa and I would each have our own pile and I would have to count the presents to make sure how many we each had.

Next on the morning agenda was to wake Lisa. Stocking in hand, I would go into Lisa’s room and grab her stocking. After waking her up, we would look thru our respective stockings and open the little present. It was at that point that I would give her details about the piles awaiting us downstairs.

Now it was time to wake Mom, Dad, and Grandma. They seemed to take forever to wake up and get downstairs, but of course, that was simply because Mom had just gone to bed a few hours before. Once we were all situated downstairs, it was time to open presents. I would dig right in and rip open each package, where Lisa would carefully and thoughtfully remove the wrapping paper from a single gift as if she were going to save the paper for another time. (She still does this and it drives me nuts)

Everything about my childhood Christmas puts a smile on my face and makes me happy. Remembering how much fun I had with Grandma Is staying over on Christmas makes me hope that when I’m a grandma, we can do something like this too.