Favorite Christmas Memory

Christmas is a big deal for my family so I have a lot of heart warming memories from my youth.

But the one I'm going to share makes me giggle still.

I was a freshman in high school my brother and had a few morning chores on the ranch to do without fail. Even on Christmas morning we had to do them before we could get into our stockings. And we couldn't open anything under the tree until everyone was awake and ready to open presents.

My brother Rebel woke me up very impatient to get in his stocking so I threw on my cozy winter boots and parka(i don't handle cold well, and December in Idaho is flippin' cold)and stumbled after him to the barn where the cows were waiting to eat.

The moon was up,full and bright, especially with all the light reflecting back from all the snow on the ground, it was easy to do chores that way when we were so used to doing them in the dark!

We feed the cows and the horses and the dogs and then made our way back to the house, I stoked up the fire and I remember thinking it was weird there were still so many coals left, it's usually all but dead in the morning when mom came out wondering what all the ruckus was.

Turns out I should have checked the clock when Rebel woke me up because it was only midnight! The moon had tricked me into thinking it was morning and the sun would be up soon. Mom definitely made us go back to sleep without checking out our stockings and I gave Rebel a bad time for waking me up so early :)

Still silver light of the moon on sparkly frozen snow in the sage brush makes me smile and is the one of the few things I like about winter.