It was Christmas time in 1987 and my husband came home with terrible news. He was being laid off without pay. He was completely downcast and sick with worry. I reminded him that God had brought us through such a layoff before and He would again. He sadly reminded me that he had nothing to buy our 6 small children Christmas gifts.
As I lay in bed that night I wondered what we had that we could use for Christmas. I remembered buying up some small farm and zoo animals for very little when a nearby department store went out of business. I had hidden them away to use as small gifts when ever I needed them. I said to my husband, “I have those little farm and zoo animals in the closet. What if we make wooden barns and a wooden zoo and put those animals in them?” He seemed unsure, but I persisted. “Let’s do what we CAN do and not worry about what we can’t”.
The next day I drew up some pencil drawings to use as patterns for the barns. I showed them to my husband and he seemed to get a little inspired. He went to work cutting out the wooden pieces from scrap wood. I counted out our change and bought bright paints to paint them with. He used his creativity to create and paint the zoo. He painted a pond and grass on the wood and glued little plastic trees down onto it.
We had a two year old and I knew he would love wooden blocks to play with. I asked my neighbor if he had any small scraps of 2 x 4s that I could have. He gave me enough to make 52 little blocks. I sanded them all by hand and then painted them bright primary colors.
We used Christmas gift money from my in-laws to buy our oldest a little microscope and our youngest a little doll, but we had two beautiful home-made barns, a zoo, and 52 bright colored blocks for four of the children. How they loved those gifts! They are grown now and have children of their own, but they say that was their favorite Christmas. They truly loved those gifts.
