Santa Delivered

Yes it’s 2012 and I am still talking about Christmas. I got a much needed new computer for Christmas which is awesome! Last week was filled with kids home and one that was sick, a sleepover at our house for Juliana and one of her friends, trying to organize new toys, family visiting, and a get together with friends – it was a great week but left no time to set-up my computer and transfer photos. Now that I have most of the set-up complete, I am catching up on the holidays.

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One of the things that has surprised me about Christmas since I have had my own children is how different the idea of Santa is treated in different families. In some houses everything comes from Santa and in others it is simply a few stocking stuffers, presents wrapped vs not wrapped, etc. I can’t imagine giving Santa the credit for all of the cool presents and I don’t want presents on Christmas to stop when the kids stop believing in Santa. In our house all of the presents under the tree are from Mommy and Daddy. They are wrapped in the same paper and labeled. Then each child has a separate pile with their stocking – the stocking includes toothbrushes, candy, accessories, cars, etc and there is a small stack of presents – usually books, markers and other small toys.  Santa presents are wrapped in tissue paper, the paper is different for each child and there are no gift tags.

The boys are too young to ask for specific presents. Juliana had her top present picked out months ago – the Play-doh dentist set – a $12 present that she wanted more than anything. I kept waiting for her to ask for something big and 2 weeks before Christmas she added a second request – strawberries. The week of Christmas she added one final request – ice skates. She wants to go ice skating with Scott and she is concerned that they won’t have any skates for her to use. I explained that she didn’t need skates this year and she insisted that she wanted them. She created a picture for Elfie to take to Santa – she thought pictures and words would be more effective than a letter.

Christmas morning Juliana opened the play-doh set and the strawberries and was thrilled.

She said that she probably wasn’t getting ice skates and that was okay. It was much later in the morning when Scott told her that she should go look in Elfie’s home and she found this:

I had suggested that Scott create a certificate for ice skating and he created that instead. She loved it of course especially since she thought that Elfie left it for her. Juliana received everything on her list and was very happy – I’m glad her requests were simple for us to fulfill.