Delivering Christmas Goodies

Yesterday we delivered some goodies around the neighbourhood. Karen wasn't feeling ambitious enough to take on everybody, as she's done in the past, because she made up treats for all the "big kids" and didn't want to do all the houses in our neighbourhood, either, which I was fine with because, frankly, I'm not that ambitious, either. So we just picked a few families—families we had received treats from already, the people in our cul-de-sac, our visiting and home teaching families, and a few others.

Karen made peanut butter balls (dipped in chocolate), she covered clusters of peanuts in chocolate, and then she did the weirdest thing of all—she dipped potato chips in chocolate!

There was a bowl of Ruffles Originals on the counter and Andrew took a few to munch on.

"Would you stop taking the good chips?" Karen chastised him. "Those are for dipping. Eat the broken chips in the bag!"

"Wait—dipping?" I asked. "In chocolate?"


I only asked after looking for chip dip and noticing that the only dipping going on was the chocolate kind.

"Of course!" she said. "You've never experienced the joy of chocolate-dipped chips?"

No. But it brings a whole new meaning to chocolate chips, doesn't it?

So I looked up the recipe on allrecipies.com to see if there were any ratings for it. There were. I have to admit, I was rather surprised—four and a half stars and over two-thousand saves. Incredible.

Anyway, we delivered the goodies yesterday and took Rachel and Michael and Miriam and Diana along to help. Diana and Miriam just sat in the backseat like a couple of lazies (kidding, Diana) while Rachel and Michael did the majority of the running. That's what you have kids for, right?

Truthfully, we thought Rachel would break at the first house. She paused about five feet away from the van, turned around, and said nervously, "Which house is it again?"

"This one—the one we're at!" I told her.

She ran up to the door and rang the doorbell but instead of having Brother or Sister Nelson come to the door, one of their grandchildren answered instead. Rachel shoved the treats at him, turned on her heels, and ran.

"I don't know him!" she wailed when she got back to the van.

We explained that it was alright if she didn't know everybody who answered the door because lots of people have visitors this time of year and Mommy and Daddy were watching to make sure she'd be safe.

I thought for sure she'd give up but instead she said, "Who are we going to next? Michael—you can come with me!"

They delivered to a few houses successfully until we got to some very dear friends who own a very sweet dog who recently had puppies. Their dog no longer acts like a very sweet dog. Instead she acts like a mother bear, which would be intimidating...if she wasn't the size of my left shoe.

Michael and Rachel walked up to the  house and rang the doorbell. When the dog started barking, Michael took off running to the car. Rachel, though, stood there stoically (but shaking in her boots) because she knew she had a job to do. The door opened and the dog burst out of the house yapping and bouncing and looking as threatening as possible.

Michael hadn't quite made it to the car so he started running around in circles screaming and Rachel threw the goodies and started running around screaming and the dog was running around barking and the dog's owner was running around trying to catch the dog while yelling at it to "come here!"

It was hilarious.

I happened to be across the street dropping some goodies off at another house and ended up shoving them at my recipient and saying, "Here. Uh. Merry Christmas!" And then bolted across the street to rescue the children while Diana tried to free herself from the backseat (it's tricky) and Andrew got stuck in his seatbelt.

In the end the dog was captured and dragged inside, Michael sought sanctuary in the van, and Rachel was caught up in a big hug. Our neighbours brought out the new puppy to show to Rachel to help cheer her up and that worked...until Andrew decided he'd just pull ahead to the next house.

"They're leaving without us!" Rachel shrieked and jumped out of my arms and took off sprinting after the van.

"It's alright! They're just going next door," I called out at the same time that Rachel assured me, "It's okay, Mom! I made them stop!"

After that we had a checklist to go through before Michael or Rachel would deliver any treats.

"Does this house have a dog?"

"Does this house have a cat?"

"Does this house have any animals?"

Miriam decided it was funny to tease the kids and began suggesting that certain houses had monsters. Fortunately both Michael and Rachel are mature enough to know that house don't have monsters. Duh. They are both so much cooler than Miriam because they know that.

When we got to Rachel's friend Spencer's house we went through the checklist for Michael, even though Rachel had already decided she wanted to deliver the goodies because  it was Spencer's house.

"Does this house have a dog?"

"Yes; but it's a small one and I'll come with you guys," I said.

Michael chose to stay with his mom in the van. Rachel braved the front door with me.

Again the dog—even smaller than the last—burst out of the house and started yapping and jumping, but not in a threatening way. No. This dog was saying, "Yippee! I'm free!"

Rachel, however, heard it say quite clearly, "That little girl looks delicious! I'm gonna have me a chunk of her thigh!"

She took off running toward the van. We have fancy doors that open at the touch of a button so she started hollering at Daddy, "Open the door! Open the door! Open the door!"

He did and as the door was sliding open she made a miraculous leap into the van.

"Close the door! Close the door! Close the door!" she panted.

And just like that she was safe.

I delivered to the rest of the houses-with-dogs by myself. But it was so awesome to have the kids do the rest of the running! They were so brave to face all those people and were surprisingly good at doorbell-hunting—Rachel even found a doorbell that was hidden behind some Christmas garland. I was so proud of her for continuing her delivery route even after facing scary strangers and multiple dogs—there were a few teary eyes but overall she was happy to be helping and I was happy to be helped.