The Man In The Red Suit

This past weekend we took the kids to the local fire department to go see Santa. We had taken Lili to Harley Davidson last year for the same reason, however she FREAKED OUT when she saw the man in the red suit. I'm sure a lot of that had to do with her age. Being a year older and understanding so much more, we were able to talk to her about Santa a little more this year before we went. We explained that she would sit on his lap and tell him what she wanted for X-mas...and if she was a good little girl, he would visit our house in the middle of the night on X-mas Eve and leave presents for her to open in the morning. Of course she thought this was the greatest idea EVER...and proceeded to beg to go 'see Santa' right away. This lasted the entire week until Saturday finally arrived. I was so glad that we had prepped her for the visit because the kids did awesome! No, they didn't smile...but hey, they didn't burst into tears either. I was totally shocked to discover that the Santa they hired was awesome and looked and played the part! He was great and really took time with each child before moving onto the next. We arrived right when they started and only had to wait in line about 10 minutes before it was our turn. Will seemed in awe of Santa's greatness and couldn't stop staring at him.

After our short visit we spent almost an hour playing in the firetrucks. I'm pretty sure my kids would have been entertained the entire day if we had stayed. Lili climbed right up into one and refused to come down. We had to bribe her with a cookie or else risk the wrath of Lili raining down on us. I think Will thought he had died and gone to heaven when we let him crawl around. You could almost hear him screaming 'FREEDOM! WAHOO!'...

We had a great time and will definitely be heading back there again next year!