Friday, December 31, 2010

The mystery of the Christmas Eve ghost dog

Every year at Christmas, especially when we are up very late on Christmas Eve we hope that our children will let us sleep in a bit on Christmas morning.

This, however, has rarely been the case.

For example, the year when Brielle was 5. I woke up Christmas morning around 4:45 because the light from the living room was shining down the hall into our bedroom. Knowing that we had most definitely turned the light off, I got up to see Brielle dancing around the living room in her new pink bathrobe, with all of her other Christmas gifts scattered around the living room.....

She had obviously been awake for quite a while.

This year, however, was different. My husband woke me up at 7:00 to tell me that the kids were ready to see their Christmas gifts. Fortunately, he was awake when the kids came upstairs, and made them sit in the family room until I got up. I was very surprised that we needed to wake up Max also, because he had been so excited the night before, and had even gone to bed really early so that Santa could come to our house without fear of being caught by him.

As the kids were opening their gifts, I thanked them for letting us sleep past 5:00 and Brielle told me this story.

"Mom, I actually woke up really early this morning, around 4:00. I layed in bed, trying to go back to sleep until about 4:30, when I decided that I really needed to go to the bathroom, so I got up and opened my bedroom door, and I heard what sounded like a really big dog panting loudly in the hallway, so I hurried and slammed my door, jumped back in my bed, pulled the blankets over my head and stayed there until 7:00."

We don't nor have we ever had a dog, so I was trying to think of what could have been making this noise when CJ said "Really? I heard that same noise several years ago on Christmas morning when I was about to get up really early!"

So there you have it. It seems that we have some sort of ghost dog that shows up early Christmas morning, to scare our children back into their beds so that we can get a little sleep.

Now the question, why?

My older kids have a theory that the previous owners had a dog that died on Christmas, and he comes back every year at this time.
Max thinks that Santa was still in the house.

What do you think it could be?

8 comments:

Cheeseboy said...

The Ghost dog of Christmas present is guarding the presents. Awesome.

Karen said...

I wish I had that Ghost Dog when my kids were little. We had a hard and fast rule that they couldnt' come get us until 6am, but I could hear them giggling from 5am on.

middle child said...

Obviously it is the ghost dog. I am a bit jealous as all we have are ghost cats.

Kristina P. said...

I think it was a projection of their hopes and dreams for a dog. My husband has the same dream.

just call me jo said...

Your children are ultra-imaginative or slightly warped. I'm sure it's the prior and not the latter. Positive, yes, absolutely sure!

Jessica G. said...

Ummm...you don't want to know what I think. This is a family-oriented blog, after all.

Cheryl@Gingerbread Crafts said...

I too wish that ghost dog was at my place on Christmas morning when my FIFTEEN year old son and FIFTY year old brother in law decided that 4.40am was time to get up!

Mae Rae said...

Max was probably right. Only the noise was not Santa it was one of his reindeer that he needed to help bring something into the house. But because the chimney is so small and reindeer are so big, it just seemed as small as a dog.