Santa

I find the great Santa debate to be quite humorous. I am discovering that I am pretty much alone in that camp.

Santa is a big deal.

I am beginning to think that along with religion and politics, Santa should not be discussed amongst polite society.

If you tell your kids there is no Santa because you want to emphasize the birth of Christ and not presents, presents, presents, you have just destroyed the innocence of every child around the globe and you might as well paint yourself green and go work with the Grinch.

On the other hand, if you let your kids believe in Santa, you are a backslidden Christian at best and your children will probably grow up into greedy, ill behaved adults who don't trust you because you lied to them.

We choose to take a more middle of the road approach. Our kids like Santa, OK they love him, but they know he is not real (gasp!) but just a fun, pretend part of Christmas.  Santa is much like other fun pretend guys: Superman, Mickey Mouse etc. We emphasize Jesus, but we don't outlaw Santa.

Like most middle of the road approaches, it irritates both of the other sides. That's OK. We go visit Santa every year and we are sure not to mention the truth about Santa while we are in line. We don't want to start any holy, I mean, Santa wars.

Here's his house. Pretty impressive.

2 of William's favorite things:the color yellow and a lollipop.

There is an insane wait to see Santa at The Grove, our Santa spot of choice. This year they had us take a number and come back in an hour. So we wandered and took in the sights.

We also went down to The Farmer's Market and had us some Bob's Donuts. It's tradition.

This year William chose the dinosaur. He ate less than half of it. But it was fun to play with.

This year Lilly got to eat donuts too. Boy was she happy!

After wandering and donuts, we headed back to see Santa. All the kids looked sharp, but Lilly was a complete show stopper in those pig tails. The entire day people stopped whenever they saw her. Grandpas, teen age girls, moms with their own kids in tow, even a young man or 2 just couldn't help stopping to adore her cuteness. Two strangers asked to take her picture. It was fun to be in the presence of a star. We were in LA, after all.

The only problem is, she is figuring out how cute she is.

We took our traditional family picture with Santa, (which I will post as soon as Aaron scans it at work. So it may be a while!)

Then Aaron and the boys went shopping for Mommy's present at my favorite store.

James looked spiffy in his red tie and freshly lost tooth. The first one from the top.

He was pretty proud.

And then we waited around at the gas station for the trolley to come.

A fun time was had by all, no matter what side of the Santa debate you're on.