{visiting santa and christmas light traditon}

our public library does many great things for the community all throughout the year. we have taken advantage of several opportunities and this year we decided to visit santa at the library.  greyson has gone back in forth about whether he believes in santa or not this year.  in fact, when we woke up on Saturday and i told the kids we were visiting him, greyson didn't even want to go.  then all of a sudden he got really excited and wrote santa a letter, picked out his santa shirt to wear, and couldn't wait to go see him.  kenna didn't want to sit on santa's lap with or without greyson so we didn't make her (although i secretly love pictures of kids crying on santa's lap!). 

Dear Santa, I want a blaster gun and I want a skateboard.  I have been a good boy.  Greyson

saturday night we went to Mishawaka to winding brook's subdivision and looked at christmas lights.  we started taking the kids last year and hope to continue for many years.   this year we invited some friends to join us.  we took the kids to chickfala.  it was quite chaotic with six kids, but they did pretty well.   greyson was a little preoccupied most of the time by some of his friends, but when we got home he said he liked looking at them (apparently in small doses with lots of laughter and who knows what else in between).  kenna enjoyed looking at them and still was talking about them the next day.  i love that there are so many activities to do as a family during the holidays.

the following pictures were taken in the complete dark, thus the blurriness and kids hiding their faces.  they thought this was hilarious...i love some of the expressions they produced and this is only a small sampling. :)