St. Nicholas Day (December 6)

The neighbor down the street asked me if we would be interested in playing "St. Nicholas" for her son. I hadn't really heard much about St.Nicholas growing up, but the link my neighbor sent me had a nice synopsis of St. Nicholas and how he wanted to show kindness and generosity to a family in need by leaving 3 bags of gold just inside their window (apparently by their shoes). Soon the story spread all over Europe and children were putting out their shoes hoping St. Nicholas would stop by. I thought I'm not really much of a Santa person, but I could get behind St. Nicholas and his story. And so we agreed to be St. Nicholas for their house and my neighbor offered to fill Nathaniel and Logan's shoes too.
Before bed I explained to Nathaniel that we should leave our shoes outside the front door in case St.Nicholas might come by. This is the first he heard of it, but he was all for it. He opened the front door and chucked the shoes out there, closed the door and peered through the window. Then I had to explain it was time for bed and we could check the shoes in the morning. Oh great! I didn't think this through... how is he going to sleep now? Thankfully, after a few minutes he agreed to go to sleep. His first words in the morning was, "Did Nicholas fill the shoes?"




He immediately ate all the chocolate (mental note: that much chocolate at 7am doesn't make for a smooth morning) and was very excited about his Thomas stickers and matchbox car. Logan enjoyed his stickers too. I was surprised how fun it was. All day he was talking about how next year maybe we could put something in Nicholas' shoes. Yes, we are trying to foster a spirit of giving....