{"id":173,"date":"2013-12-21T00:43:28","date_gmt":"2013-12-20T16:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/?p=173"},"modified":"2013-12-21T00:43:28","modified_gmt":"2013-12-20T16:43:28","slug":"yes-nathan-there-is-a-santa-claus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/2013\/12\/21\/yes-nathan-there-is-a-santa-claus\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes Nathan… There is a Santa Claus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Santa has always been kind to my family. And I don\u2019t mean the \u201cSantas\u201d at the mall, or the business world Santa\u2026 I mean the real Santa. Yeah\u2026 Yeah\u2026 I hear you, but wait.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When I was first married, we were really poor. Oh we ate ok and had a roof over our head, but not much more. We were stationed in Germany. When Christmas came around we had just enough to by a Cuckoo Clock for her family and mine. Then we were broke. We decided we couldn\u2019t get anything for each other. The enlisted club where I was stationed had slot machines.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was only a few days till the next payday and we had groceries in the cupboard so we took our last few bucks\u2026 I mean very few bucks\u2026 three or four bucks to entertain ourselves at the slot machines. Quite quickly I hit a jackpot. I didn\u2019t tell Emily. It wasn\u2019t a huge jackpot but enough so that I could buy her a surprise present. After that I was ready to go. But I figured Emily would want to play for a bit longer. But no\u2026 she was ready to go home too.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Certainly you\u2019ve figured out that she hit a jackpot too and didn\u2019t tell me. There were two \u201cmysterious\u201d presents under the tree from \u201cSanta\u201d on Christmas morning. So was it just luck\u2026 or was it Santa. Stop!!! Don\u2019t answer that question yet.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A few years later, after we had a basketball team worth of kids, I always wanted my Christmas tree and living room to look like a toy store on Christmas morning. About the time my oldest daughter started having doubts about Santa we were stationed in England\u2026 way before internet and on-line ordering. So she asked for an impossible present less then a week before Christmas\u2026 a pair of stilts. And she stuck to it. A pogo stick nor anything else would do. We traveled to London, Oxford, and all over the country side. There were no stilts in all of England. Well\u2026 I won\u2019t give you the details, but on Christmas morning, there was a pair of titanium, magnesium, and chromemolly stilts under the Christmas tree. Hummmm\u2026 Santa? Don\u2019t decide just yet.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Through the years the same sort of thing happened from time to time and kid to kid. There was the Cabbage Patch doll crisis\u2026 we won one at a raffle. There was an unobtainable electronic guizmo that we got when we found it by some miracle. And so it went. I was a pretty good provider (if I do say so myself) so stuff like this didn\u2019t happen every year\u2026 just every once in a while when really needed.<\/span><\/p>\n

When my kids started having kids on their own the same kinds of things kept happening. We had a lot of family Christmases with the whole family at my house, and no matter how much my kids were struggling financially, \u201cSanta\u201d always made sure my living room looked like a toy store. <\/span><\/p>\n

The last time \u201cSanta\u201d stepped in was when my oldest daughter\u2019s youngest was having his doubts about Santa and was testing. It was the year of the great X-Box shortage. Her son was insistent that nothing else would do. She couldn\u2019t afford it even if they found one, but I told her that money wouldn\u2019t be a problem\u2026 just find one. She tried on-line\u2026 ebay and everything you can imagine. Nothing. We went to every electronics, department, and toy type store in the region\u2026 again nothing. Then on one last chance we went back to a local Circuit City three days before Christmas. They told us they were getting in a truck the next day and that they might\u2026 might have an X-Box on it.<\/span><\/p>\n

We couldn\u2019t reserve it or anything like that since they weren\u2019t even sure it was going to be on the truck. We were told that someone would have to be there the instant it came in\u2026 if it came in. So, my daughter went to the store when it opened up and stayed in the store all day long waiting for the truck. By the afternoon everyone in the store knew her and why she was there.<\/span><\/p>\n

I got a call from her that the truck had finally arrived. A few minutes after I got to the store the manager gave her the \u201chi sign\u201d. She said this was the best present Santa had ever brought her. As I wrote the check to pay for it and with tears of joy in her eyes she turned to me and said, \u201cThank you Daddy\u201d. That\u2019s as good as the best presents Santa has ever brought me. <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to ask you if it was Santa or not. I\u2019m going to just say that the kid that wanted the X-Box is 17 and he still believes in Santa. All of my kids, and all of their kids still believe in Santa. That\u2019s five kids and (OMG) twelve grandkids from 5 to 21 that believe in Santa.<\/span><\/p>\n

This year Santa came through for me. I wanted to go on a cruise with a bunch of my cruise friends right after Christmas\u2026 over New Years. I was saving my money for a grand adventure next year. Well\u2026 Santa couldn\u2019t contain her excitement and spilled the beans early that she is taking me with her family on that cruise. Yipeeeeeeeeeeee!<\/span><\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the end\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m spending this Christmas with my daughter, Jodi, that lives in San Antonio. Her husband is in the Army and deployed to Afghanistan. So we are having the family Christmas here at her house. <\/span><\/p>\n

Tonight I asked their 5 year old son, Nathan, what he wanted Santa to bring him for Christmas. He said an X-box… and then for the first time he said he wanted Santa to bring him his daddy. I had to cry… but… they are happy tears. Nathan, his brother and two sisters don’t know it yet, but we just found out today that Major Tony Bradway will be home from Afghanistan Friday morning.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes Nathan… there is a Santa Claus<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Santa has always been kind to my family. And I don\u2019t mean the \u201cSantas\u201d at the mall, or the business world Santa\u2026 I mean the real Santa. Yeah\u2026 Yeah\u2026 I hear you, but wait.\u00a0 When I was first married, we … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions\/174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kokomoman.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}