Jolly Old Saint Nick! 2012

I was so excited for the kids to see Santa this year. That's all I wanted was a cute Santa picture with all 3 boys in their Santa shirts. I planned an evening out when I heard Kenkraft was having Santa come. We dressed the boys up and even stopped by the store to get Isaac's Santa shirt he wanted. (He thought it was so funny... it looked like Santa's belly, complete with a picture of a cookie in the pocket.) Well we got there and to my surprise at 6 pm on a cold winter night... Santa was outside in the DARK without even a spotlight on him! Now what? The kids were excited to see him but I knew my picture was not going to turn out that great. I was right.

I sat in the car with Tanner while Brett and the boys stood in the freezing cold line waiting to see Santa. As I'm writing this I'm thinking in my head, Brett is such a good man to go along with my crazy hair-brained ideas and not complain about them! Anyways, at the last minute I had ALL THREE of my boy remove their coats (including Tanner?!!! What was I thinking, that baby doesn't even have a hat on his little bald head and he's only 4 months old!) Just to get a picture with Santa!!!

Well, I had one picture turn out crisp and clean... but Isaac wasn't smiling.

So I took it again, in the dark... and when I got home it was blurry. Oh well. They still had fun talking to Santa. Dax even hugged him. He gave them a candy cane. We bundled them back up in the car and I got them not so hot.. more like barley luke warm hot coco and doughnuts Kenkraft was giving away. It was an experience for the books. We took the kids to Arctic Circle to run around and eat a kids-meal.

We went back to my mom's house for a little bit since we were in the area and I tried to get a picture of all my boys in their Christmas shirts. Daxton's shirt said, "Elf Crossing" with two candy canes on it. They were a little wound up from the night and really didn't feel like posing for yet another picture mom insisted on taking... but I got a few cute ones of my 3 darling "deers!"

  

 Things don't always turn out how you plan, but you can't beat the family memories you create. As we drove home we drove around looking at Christmas lights. Both boys screamed when they saw them. They loved the all the colors and lawn ornaments. We went to a very busy blinking house. You know the ones that every square inch of their house is covered in lights and they blink according to the song being played. That was my favorite part of the night. Dax and Isaac sat on mine and Brett's lap in the front seat of our warm car watching the light show. There was so much love in that little car. The kids were so excited. They had fast, crazy songs and soft slow songs about Jesus birth. The spirit of Christmas really shinned for me that night in the car. I didn't want to leave. I just wanted to sit there holding on to my little boys as their faces lit up with the joy of Christmas.