The Steen Style

Merry Christmas Eve! I love the night before Christmas. Growing up, we always went to the 11:00 PM candlelight service and then would go home to prepare the Santa goodies and write him a letter or make a puzzle for him to finish! You’re probably thinking – “yeah, you put out some cookies and milk for Santa and then went to sleep.” You, my friends, would be so wrong!

Growing up, my parents always told us that since Santa received milk and cookies at all of the other houses and it was always so cold, we needed to be really nice to Santa and help warm him up. So at our house, we left Santa a glass of bourbon on the rocks with a bowl of roasted peanuts! My grandpa always told me that nothing would warm up Santa better than some whiskey and peanuts so that is what we did! People always looked at us so funny when we would talk about leaving our special Santa treats but we stuck by it and Santa always rewarded us for our thoughtfulness and the warmth we provided him! 🙂 If we decide to have kids, I only hope that one day we can make Christmas as fun for our children as my parents did for my brother and me!

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Merry almost Christmas! In the spirit of the week, I thought I would share a funny memory with you all from my childhood.

Growing up, I loved going to my grandparent’s farm in NE Kansas! They had a ton of acreage, cows and tractors to play on. The best time to go was always at Christmas. We would constantly worry that Santa wouldn’t find us in Kansas, so we would make sure to leave him a note at our house to remind him where we were staying that year. I think even more than us loving to visit, my Grandpa Pete loved to make each Christmas morning more and more special as the years went on. Santa was always getting into some crazy antics and pulling some serious stunts while leaving us our presents!

One year, Grandpa announced that he felt really sorry for the reindeer since they had to stay outside in the cold while Santa went inside to get his treats and warm up. So Grandpa brought a bale of hay and some water over from the cow’s corral and put it on the front sidewalk before we went to bed. In the morning, we rushed downstairs to see what Santa had brought us, only to find a very angry Grandma. The reindeer were so grateful for their refreshments that they had pooped on the sidewalk!! Grandma was against the whole thing from the beginning because she just knew that something like this would happen. 🙂 So before we could open our presents, we watched Grandpa as he shoveled the poop and carried it over to the corral. Poor Grandpa…he was just trying to be nice…

I could probably write a novel on fun stories like this that seemed to happen every year we were in Kansas! It was such a special time when we were there. One time Santa’s pants ripped and the fabric was laying in their dog’s mouth and then one time he tripped over furniture and the whole living room was in complete disarray when we woke up. Santa had a heck of a time at the farm! Good thing we stick close to home now…

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