Christmas festivities

I honestly have a really hard time teaching, and talking to my kids about santa until they have the REAL meaning of Christmas down in their little heads. Know what I mean?? We've been teaching the girls about Christmas for some time now, and explaining to them why we celebrate... but I still find myself hesitating to tell them "santa" is gonna bring them gifts. Is that dumb?? I am constantly having to remind myself of the joy and the fun Christmas was for me, waiting for santa as my brother and sister and I lay in the bedroom Christmas eve night, talking and laughing and excited about what was to come the next morning . I don't want my kids to miss out on that. Those are some of the greatest memories I have with my sibs. So I've just learned to do it all in proportion. If we blow santa, and gifts up to be bigger than the birth of Jesus Christ then we might have a problem on our hands. So we keep santa small, and Jesus big.

Anyways, so we went to visit santa here in the Hobbs... and before I go any further, just wanna make a shout out to all you San Angelo-ans.... ya'll think the SA mall is small???? Just come for a visit and I'll show you a small mall. Hobbs mall is what the san angelo mall looks like to the San Antonio, or Dallas mall. So San Angelo mall is HUGE compared to Hobbs.... anyways, yes, so we went to see santa and it was a pretty successful trip with a 1 and 2 year old if I might say so myself. All day Madelynn was so excited to go see santa and she kept talking about seeing santa, and when I would ask her if she was gonna sit on his lap, she very quickly said NO! How she knew who he was, what he looked like, and that she DID NOT wanna sit in his lap is beyond me. We really had no talk of santa prior to this. When we got there thats just how she reacted too. She was excited to be there and to see him, but she wasn't gonna sit on his lap!! Payton was the exact same way. So we got a great picture of all of us with santa. It was a fun little outing. We ended up running into Nat's sister, and all her kids and grandkids also visiting santa and we all went to dinner afterwards. I was really sad that we didn't get a pic of the little man before we left. I asked Nat to dress him and Nat being Nat, he tucked Stetson's long sleeve button up shirt in.... and told me we needed to get him a belt. It was funny. By time we got to santa it was already untucked.

I bought one of those ginger bread house kit things and we had fun putting it all together. Payton was a grouchy little girl so she was not involved in the making of this. Madelynn really enjoyed it tho. She just wanted to eat the candy and couldn't comprehend why we weren't supposed to.

the finished product

after awhile, we looked over and saw this:

and went on to read in the instructions that you're supposed to let the icing set on the house for 15 min BEFORE you put the candies on... not after. Lesson learned.

We had a great visit back home this week. Payton had her appointment, and Stetson also had his 4 month check up, and our last with Dr. Wehner (waaaaaaa!!!!!!) Its strange to stay in my parents house"visiting" that'll take some getting used to. Its always so hard to try and fit in seeing everyone so I hope no one gets offended when we come to town and don't see you. We try our best to cram in a full time with family and friends.