Must Be Santa...Santa Clause

This year Luke and Ruby started dreaming about Santa early - I think they wrote their first letter to him before Halloween.  They were definitely interested in letting him know the details of their wish lists, but its funny to see how interested they are in him.  We have spent a lot of time over the past three months talking about Santa: where he lives, how he travels, how nice he is, what about Mrs. Clause, where does everyone live at the North Pole, if we went there as explorers could we see Santa and his elves or would they all be hiding or camouflaged, why are there so many different Santas and which is the real one, etc., etc.  Anytime I didn't have a great answer, Luke would beg me to ask Google and I would have to get to work researching.  Out of all of the magic of the season, watching my kids experience Santa Clause is one of my very favorite parts.

We continued the tradition of getting pictures of the kids taken wearing Christmas jammies.  This time we made the shots even better with Santa Clause (and a familiar face)

Tim was the best sport,

And loved dressing up as the jolly old elf.  

The season started out with a great memory of a visit to Santa seven years ago.  Sometimes it is hard to remember that they were all once so small - but it is easy to remember how much Erika and Brycen loved baby Luke and fun it was to take them all to see Santa together. 

Seven years later the group had changed quite a bit, but we were all happy to be back in Santa's house, telling him about our Christmas wishes.

Speaking of wishes, the kids had some pretty great ones to deliver.

We got one last chance to see Santa the Saturday before Christmas.  Seems like a safe bet to make sure you touch base with him a few days before the big day.  This ended up being an outing with my friend Kristina and her twins that are three.  Luke and Ruby went first to show how it was done, and by the time it was the twins' turn, they had lost interest.  Kinda typical for their age.  But Luke and Ruby still had a great time and I was glad they got to have one last visit.