It was the eve of Christmas Eve when Heather stopped by her parents house to help them get ready for the party. Well, it wasn't really a party, more of a family get together with Mom and Dad, Heather and her boyfriend and Heather's brother and his girlfriend. Unfortunately, with all the arrangements, the hustling and bustling and work going on, you might have thought it was a state dinner.
When Heather pulled into the driveway that early afternoon, her mother had already left for work so the only person home was her dad, who was taking a few days off from work. She stepped out into the warm air thinking, "I can't believe it's going to drop down into the thirties by Christmas Day." She had been running the air conditioning in the car and it was so humid outside that she was glad to step almost immediately into the air conditioned house.
"Hey, Dad," she called out, "I'm here to help with the decorations. What do you need me to do."
He smiled and motioned for her to follow him. Her dad led her into their extra room where there were two large boxes and a pile of smaller ones. Grabbing them and arranging them neatly on the bed, her dad asked, "Can you wrap these for me? Your mother's got me doing so much decorating I haven't had time to wrap any of these."
She surveyed the room mentally checking off, wrapping paper, tape, scissors, ribbon and tags. Nodding, "Yeah, anything special you want on these?"
"Just wrapping paper," he replied, "Now I got to get back and fix those lights on the tree."
Heather got to work and in a very short time got everything wrapped. Without needing to make any fancy bows and things, it was quite easy. After carefully stacking the gifts she spotted an oversize bow and she had an idea.
Heather's father heard her calling and walked back through the hallway grumbling about being disturbed. She could hear him say, "This had better be good," as he opened the door into the room.