Santa

I have struggled with what to do about Santa - how long do we lie about it all?  Are the kids going to be mad that we lied to them?  Sad that he's not real?  I don't remember believing in Santa, so I don't know how they are going to react.  I think it's fun to believe in the magic of the season, but the bottom line is that we are lying to our kids.  And that bothers me.

But for now, Rylan and Mackenzie believe that Santa is real and brings presents to fill our stockings.  The presents under the tree are from Mom & Dad.  But we don't write letters to Santa and I don't bring them to the mall to sit on Santa's lap.  Our focus for the Christmas season is on Jesus rather than Santa, but it is fun to do the Santa thing.

At one of our family Christmases, Santa always comes to bring presents for the little kids.  This same Santa has been coming since Nick and his cousins were babies - that's pretty amazing!  Both Rylan and Mackenzie were so excited to see Santa this year.  Mackenzie would have clung to him all night if she could have!

On Christmas Eve, I went a little more overboard than I had originally planned - but it's just so much fun to see their excitement - I couldn't help myself.  We made reindeer food to sprinkle on the driveway - oatmeal for strength to keep flying, hot cocoa mix for a sweet treat, and glitter so they can see it when they're flying.  (Don't worry, glitter is perfectly safe for Santa's reindeer - because they are magic - but don't feed glitter to any non-magical animals)

Mixing up our reindeer food.

Going out to sprinkle it around - or just dump it all in one pile like Mackenzie did.  :)

Then we came in to prepare for Santa's arrival.  I told them to show me how excited they were for Santa to come - this is the face I got from Mackenzie - cracks me up!

We decided to leave a note - Rylan dictated to me "Dear Santa, Please eat 1 cookie and take the rest to your family.  Thank you for the toys in our stockings.  We love you!  From Rylan and Mackenzie"

As I was tucking him in, Rylan said to me, "Maybe we'll get extra presents since we left so many cookies and we told Santa that we love him!"  Please can I keep this innocence forever?!?!