Happy Christmas Eve eve...

Ok, we're making strides toward being up-t0-date on this thing... and that feels good. =) I'm officially one month behind and catching up quickly.

The Thursday before Christmas, my brother Kelly and my mom were both in town so we braved the chaos of the 'Big Mall' (a very relative term, there's not much "BIG" at all in our awesome little city... still, it's the only significant mall around) to get a picture of the kids with Santa. And I figured with them around "how bad could it be? We're now 1:1 with my kids, and we (the adults) can handle anything if we're only in charge of one kid each, right?! "

And we really did fine. The kids were so enamored with Santa (whom we explain is really just a 'helper' of the real Santa. After all, the REAL SANTA is way too busy this time of year to sit around at a mall for pictures). Go ahead, hate us because we let our kids believe in Santa. We're fully aware that some Christian families will wag their finger at us, but we think it's fun, don't take it too seriously, and we still (gasp!) love God and believe that Jesus is more important. We just ALSO believe that a little Santa doesn't hurt anything.

The girls had a BLAST hanging out with "Super Uncle Kelly" (I'm not sure if Elise gave him the nickname or it was a self-proclaimed thing...either way, it's stinkin' adorable and that's the ONLY way she refers to him now.) and Mimi. Man, I love it when my family is in town.

We only waited in line for about an hour, Mitchell was happy people-watching the whole time from the stroller
the girls and Mimi rode the North Pole Express a few times,



and we got a cute (enough!) picture.

Then the kids got to share a cookie from the mall and a ride on the often-begged-for (but oh-so-disgusting-germ-covered) ride in the food court. They were about as happy as they could be.