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Three festive siblings who left their list for Santa in a garden centre sleigh were invited back for Christmas presents and afternoon tea after a social media campaign tracked down the adorable children.
Amy Logan’s kids Summer aged 12, Alfie aged nine, and Nevaeh aged four, were welcomed back into Newton Regis Garden Centre in Tamworth after staff found the note and asked Facebook users for help in tracking them down.
They had afternoon tea, presents and even a reply from Santa Claus himself.
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Amy told Birmingham Live : “It was magical. I can’t even put it all into words, it was such a special experience and something we will never ever forget.
“We didn’t expect it at all, we have never had anything like this happen to us before really. We don’t get treated very much.
“We lost my dad a few years ago and it has never been the same for us so it is always a difficult period of time as a family to get through.
“It is all about the children for me and just to see them so smiley and happy, it was absolutely wonderful. My youngest is four now so she is starting to understand it. They were in awe of Santa. They were still buzzing two or three days later. It really got us feeling festive and they can’t wait for Christmas Day now.”
Explaining how it all came about, Amy said: “My mum Wendy took the children to the garden centre and before they went my daughter wrote a letter to Santa to put in a post box there. Because she is so young she had basically just scribbled on the page so my eldest daughter wrote down what they all wanted.
“When they got there there was no post box so they put it in the sleigh. A few weeks later my mum rang me and said there was a post on Facebook about finding a letter and one of the names on there was Alfie.
“I commented and said ‘I am not sure if this is us or not but my children put a letter in the sleigh’ and they replied yes it was us and they would love to invite us back because it really made them smile, the big sister writing it on behalf of her little brother and sister.
“The kids were really excited to go back. Staff greeted us and knew immediately who we were, my kids were gobsmacked! The table was laid out lovely, presents for the children, balloons, a letter back from Santa for each of them, sandwiches, cakes, any drink we wanted. It was so nice. The staff were lovely, they could not have done enough for us. I was so, so grateful and we just thank them so much for what they have done.”
Centre manager Stacy Green said: “It melted our hearts and we all love a nice story, especially at Christmas.
“We had discovered nestled in our sleigh a lovely little hand written note, the note had been sat in the sleigh for a while and the writing of the names was barely legible. It was a note to Santa asking for their Christmas gifts.
“As I had trouble reading the names I decided to put a plea out on our store Facebook page, asking if the post could be shared. One name was Alfie so I asked if people would help us by sharing the post as we wanted to reward the children with gifts for such a lovely letter.
“To my astonishment, when I put the post out we had an amazing 163 shares, all keen to help us find these lovely little children. Without social media help we would not have been able to do this, but we discovered that the note was placed in a few weeks ago when the children visited with their grandma. The power of social media is incredible!
“We contacted their mum and she confirmed it was her children, and invited the family in for a festive afternoon tea on us. We had presents for the children and made them feel special for an afternoon.
“Thank you to all the lovely local people who helped us locate these little ones, their innocence in the letter is what Christmas is all about. We are a family run owned business so family is very important to us here at British garden centres and we hope we made them smile like they have us.”
The centre’s original post on November 27 read: “Good evening, this is a plea.
“Today in our lovely sleigh in our plant area we discovered nestled in the sleigh a lovely letter handwritten to Santa from a little girl and her brother and sister. She had asked Santa for her presents and also for her brother and sister.
“It was such a lovely letter but sadly the names were very difficult to read, I’m sure it said the little boy’s name was Alfie.
“If you could please share this for us, we would like to give Alfie and his sister a Christmas gift for taking the time to write this lovely note, and warming our hearts and making us smile, if anyone knows who these lovely little children are please get in touch.
“If you could please help us spread the word that would be great.”
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