Catching up...

I feel like I have more I would like to share from our holiday season. December was so busy that I didn't get a chance to post everything I wanted to. It doesn't matter when the pictures are posted, as long as they are, right?

Somehow we ended up meeting Santa 4 times this Christmas season. That must be some kind of record - for us anyway. Each visit had varying degrees of loud screaming or excessive pouting involved, as you can see below.

The first picture is from our town's official "Cookies with Santa" event. Sounds harmless enough, don't you think? Apparently Anna and James did not feel that way. They screamed pretty much from the time we entered the building to the time we left. Not sure why we stayed, waiting in line and all, other than not wanting the outing to be a complete failure. The only way we could get a picture at all was to include Dan:

Dan is trying to stay positive!

The next set of pictures is from the Lucia celebration where Emma was part of the show. This was probably our most successful visit with Santa. Actually he was Jultomten as Henry explained to us that this was the svenska Santa! Tomten gave out enormous bags of candy that may have had something to do with our success rate.

Henry is explaining to Jultomten that he wants a Nintendo DS for Christmas. (which he did not get this year...)

Emma, looking a little selfconscious on Tomten's lap.

Even James was happy! You can tell he is looking in the bag where the candy is.

Of course we couldn't be 100% successful. Anna was NOT happy - luckily she still got her bag of candy though - the evening was saved!

Next up is our visit with Santa at our country club. This is where the pouting came into the picture. Henry wouldn't have any part of sitting with Santa. Maybe he had had enough of the man in the red suit at this point? Whatever the reason, there was no talking our stubborn little man into being photographed.

Classic Anna!

Another one where Dan had to step in.

Unfortunately our fourth visit with Santa was not documented with pictures. The kids each got a gift this time and it all moved too fast for me to manage my camera. Anyway, we probably have enough photos... You may be asking yourself why in the world we insisted on our upset children sitting in Santa's lap and getting their picture taken over and over again. I think that is an excellent question. The only answer I can come up with is that we got caught up in the moment and it was "the thing to do". Plus I think it's kind of fun looking at these!