I woke up and it was still night. Had I even gone to sleep? It was dark in my room, and the pitch-black sky outside my window told me that I was the only one awake, not only in my house, but in the entire world! Excitedly, I jumped down from my bunk onto my sleeping sister’s bed.

“Abby! Abby! Abby!” I half whispered, half yelled into my four year old sister’s ear. I swear that girl could sleep through an explosion! “Abby, you dummy! Wake up! Santa came! It’s Christmas!!!” As if I’d said the magic password to open her eyes, she sat up straight and hopped out of bed. Quickly, we ran down the stairs toward Mom and Craig’s room, pausing for a minute to stare in awe at the glittering tree overflowing with presents and surprises. Next to the fireplace sat a plate full of crumbs and the empty glass that just last night held treats for Santa. The hand-embroidered stockings that hung limply above the fireplace for the past month now sat overstuffed and bulging, too heavy for their hangers to hold. We took it all in, forgetting to breathe.

After gawking for what seemed like hours at the loot and sparkle that Santa had left behind, Abby and I ran down the dark hallway into Mom and Craig’s room. “He came! He came! Santa came, Mommy! Wake up!” We turned on the lights and jumped into the bed. “Presents! Presents! Presents!” Abby yelled like a broken wind up doll. They finally submitted to our excited pleas, grabbed their robes, and trudged out to the living room looking just as pleased as I did, but slightly less excited about it.

First we had to divvy up the gifts, each person’s pile growing larger as my sister and I hustled around placing every present in front of the person whose name was written on the tag. Then we went in order, youngest to oldest, opening our gifts. Since my baby brother Sam was only four months old, he couldn’t participate in the unwrapping extravaganza. He was still snoozing soundly in his crib upstairs, unaware of all he was missing out on. After dumping out the stockings and eating half of the chocolates inside, Mom made us give all of our gift cards to her before we started in on our wrapped gifts. Abby began the unwrapping process, choosing the smallest present first, slowly peeling away its outer paper before tearing into the shrink wrap encrusted contents. I was next, selecting a present from Aunt Sherri and Uncle Greg, wanting to save my entire haul of new Santa presents for last. Next went Craig, seven years younger than Mom, starting off with a present from her. Finally it was Mom’s turn. She also chose a present from Craig, wanting to save the Santa gifts for last. We continued in this order until all the present piles were gone and only a trash bag full of paper, ribbons, and bows remained.

Satisfied, and already playing with our new goodies, Abby and I ran around the living room while Mom finished cleaning up the remnants of our Christmas morning. Just as we were about to run up the stairs, we heard Mom call, “Wait! Girls, I think we missed something!” Ecstatic at the possibility of even more presents, we turned back toward the living room where Mom held one of the painted wooden ornaments in her hand. “I think Santa left this behind,” she said with a mysterious smile on her face. Turning over the ornament, we saw a note, written in the same scrawled handwriting as the tags on the gifts Santa had left under the tree.

“Good morning girls, hope you liked your gifts!
But there’s still one more I think you missed.
Follow my instructions and you’ll see,
The very last present you have from me.
Go brush your teeth and comb your hairs
Using your brushes I put downstairs.
They’re in your mom’s bathroom, next to the sink
She really won’t mind I think.”

I read the note loudly and excitedly, stumbling over some of the words that Mom had to help me with. Slightly confused, but understanding the main idea, Abby and I jogged happily down the hallway back to Mom’s room, unable to anticipate what we would find. After brushing our hair and teeth, we found another clue on the bottom of the toothpaste tube. In the same scrawling handwriting, we were instructed to go get our clothes out of their closet where another clue was hiding in the pocket of my jumper. This time we were pointed in the direction of our shoes and socks. Abby tugged a sock onto each foot and stepped into her shoes. “I found something! A clue!” she screamed, holding up the final piece of paper, covered in the same loops and swirls as the others we found. I was so jealous! Why wasn’t the clue in myshoe? Mom helped Abby read the clue because she was too little to know all the words,

“Good job girls you’re almost done!
Your Christmas fun has just begun!
Your hair is brushed; your teeth are too,
You ate your breakfast; what’s left to do?
Walk; don’t run, up the stairs,
Your final present is waiting there.”

I dropped the clue and started up the stairs, unable to simply “walk” as the clue instructed.  Instinctively, Abby followed as Mom and Craig waited in the living room, their mysterious smiles growing bigger by the minute. We skipped up the final steps, and there it was! A Little Tykes castle complete with a fireplace and trap door. Standing at four and a half feet tall, it towered over us in its slate gray glory. The plastic castle was the perfect hideout for the two of us. We immediately began playing “Hot Lava Monster” and later that night we slept inside its walls. The castle became a permanent fixture of the upstairs loft area and Abby and I camped out in it for months whenever we could beg Mom to let us.

Although the castle was eventually replaced, we never forgot the adventurous Christmas tradition. Mom and Craig got it into their heads that solving Hungarian word puzzles and decoding GPS coordinates before breakfast is necessary to receive Christmas gifts. That Christmas, the year the tradition began, I was only five years old. Since then, the clues have progressed as we have gotten older and wiser. The full haul is usually never sitting under the tree when we wake up, and we have come to expect to do some work before the full scope of our Christmas booty is revealed. One year, all the presents actually were under the tree, but in order to get to them we had to unravel yards of yarn through the house and garage. We’ve ended up in Chino Valley, Arizona eating pizza with a priest and standing outside Castles – n – Coasters only to find out the park was closed for Christmas Day. The puzzles are difficult and unpredictable, and always require teamwork and coordination between not only Abby and me, but our younger brothers as well. Sometimes they take an hour to solve, but they often last well into the early afternoon. They’re crazy, frustrating, and slightly annoying, but I still wake up in the pitch-black morning, drag my siblings out of bed, and excitedly run to the tree, ready to take on whatever obstacles lie between my presents and me. I’m twenty years old now, but I guess some things never change.