Hope Yours Was Merry

Ours was! We had a fabulous Christmas. It was very relaxed and so much fun. I will be sharing more next week, but I need to get through Ruthi's birthday and one more Christmas gathering first! Still have lots to do!

But I thought I'd share a couple of pictures. I took these Christmas Eve before we went to my Aunt's house. (Because it would have been dark when we got back.)

Ruthi had been counting the days until she could "feed the reindeer." And she had lots of fun spreading the reindeer food.




I can't believe I forgot to take pictures of Ruthi putting out milk and cookies. And she was SO CUTE doing it! But Chip took this picture Christmas morning when I carried her in to see that Santa had enjoyed them!


This was a lot of fun for me. You see, this is the first year we've ever "allowed" Santa in our home. Yes, we totally deprived CJ of Santa. But at the time he was this age, we made the decision that we weren't going to 'do' Santa. He knew about him, and knew that other kids believed and never spoiled it for anyone. He'd even play along when someone asked him what Santa was bringing.

We had good reasons for not doing the whole Santa thing. But I won't go into them, or this will be a very long post!

I grew up not believing in Santa, and it didn't hurt me. Chip grew up believing and it didn't hurt him. We knew either way it would be fine, but that was our choice at the time.

Now we are a little older, and much more relaxed. It was kind of funny - we never even discussed what we would do about Santa with Ruthi. We didn't sit down and decide to make a change. It just happened. I was still ok either way, it didn't really matter to me.

Ruthi caught wind of Santa through our neighbors. And she was so cute talking about it. I didn't discourage it, but I didn't make a big deal either.

Then one night we were all watching a Christmas movie (I think it was called Prancer) and Ruthi asked where Santa was. Chip answered, "At the north pole making toys for good little girls and boys."

I busted out laughing. It was then I knew we were totally on the same page. And so Santa was now "allowed" in our home!

We then apologized to CJ for "robbing" him of the fun that was believing in Santa. He kind of rolled his eyes and assured us it was ok! (Whew!)

We decided there was no harm in having a little fun with this. We will not go to great lengths to keep her from finding out, but we will have fun with this as long as she wants to.

And we will never let her forget the real meaning of Christmas.

One of my favorite things she did on Christmas? She sang Happy Birthday to Jesus. (And she has been singing it ever since!)


I most likely won't be posting again until next week. I'll be very busy all weekend, so I'm letting myself off the hook with blogging. LOL!

If I'm not back by Monday, then HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!