Santa's Sleigh Mishap

On Christmas eve, as we headed over the Sierra’s to Utah a driver alerted us that our Skybox had opened up a few miles back and that they had seen all of our presents fly out of it!

Our hearts sunk, as we thanked them and turned back to see what was left of our carefully chosen and wrapped Christmas presents just hours before Christmas morning.

Near Boomtown, NV another driver had already stopped and had been gathering what they could find.  I saw them handing shredded, smashed packages to Steve.  I wandered along the side of the road to look again.  I saw crinkle paper, bits of plastic, candy, and smashed packages all over.  (I must have been in shock, because I didn’t even think to take a picture)  Ben ran across the freeway to look in the median.  Cars were flying by us and since lots of the gifts were from Santa we quickly put what we had found back in the Skybox.  Luckily we were close to Cabela’s, so we stopped and bought some cables to secure the skybox for the rest of the drive.  It was about 4:00 PM and I sent an SOS text to my brother and parents.  I knew they were seeing a movie, but I wanted them to get me wrapping paper so that I could salvage the magic of Santa for Sam.  When they saw the text they called and asked for a list of other things I had seen smashed and then set out to try to find replacements.  My amazing elves!  Most of the smashed stuff I had seen was Susie’s stocking stuffers and gifts.  So they headed to Ulta, getting there just 5 minutes before it closed, and bought the last gel nail kit on the shelf!  The salesgirls could not believe what had happened and wanted to help fill Susie’s stocking so they gave them a bag of freebies – so sweet.

We arrived in Mountain Green, UT at 2:00 AM and quickly got the kids settled in bed.  Then we gathered the troops to assess the damage.  Almost everything had serious road rash, some things were completely missing, and some things were broken.   It could have been so much worse - think Legos all over the freeway.  So we felt thankful to have been able to salvage most of the gifts.

Here are a few pictures…

Almost all of the gifts looked like this - gift bags were destroyed.

This is what was left of a gift that had been a  plastic popcorn container filled with yellow crinkle paper, candy, and gift cards for a date night.  Somehow all that remained was shreds of the gift bag and the gift cards!  I had seen the yellow crinkle paper and bits of the the plastic popcorn container all over the road.

Both Susie and Ben had made me something fragile.  Susie's survived but this is all that remained of the vase Ben had made me in his Ceramics class.  So sad.

My mom and me re-wrapping all the Santa presents.