Santa 2013

Our kids are nothing if not consistent...Hudson continues his love for Santa...and Harper continues to fear him. 

And maybe I am a bad mom for throwing her on his lap anyway, but one day she will laugh (I hope). I do rescue her quickly and she recovers fast.  The funny thing is we had visited this mall a few times before I took them, and every single time she wanted to go wave at Santa from a distance. But, she had no desire to talk to him. She did tell an elf afterwards what she wanted and asked him to relay the message.

Classic:

Sweet Hudson loves Santa. He has zero issues hugging him and snuggling up to talk to him:

And I couldn't resist submitting the picture to the news again this year:

Bop Free!

The day we went to the Polar Express turned out to be a very big day. As we were leaving to go, we realized that Harper's bop (aka pacifier) was missing.  I turned my parents house upside down looking for it.  Harper was a hard core bop addict (I just thought Hudson was bad).  I couldn't find the thing anywhere. I explained to her it was missing and she was sad, but understood it was gone.  Trent was taking the kids home after the train so I could do some Christmas shopping. I apologized that he was going to have to do bedtime bop-free for the first time without me.  Mom and I went to dinner and I realized when we got there...the bop was with me. Oops. I called Trent and explained, but she had already gone to bed with ZERO problems!  And she was fine everyday after that.  I told her I would take her to Build-A-Bear as her prize (she told me she just wanted a sucker:)).  We found an old bop (that she knew was yucky and unusable) and she put it in her pink bear that she chose.  Such an exciting time for my big girl!!  We are all so very proud of her!

Christmas Program!

 The great Ice Storm of 2013 caused Hudson's Christmas party to be postponed.  I was really worried they weren't going to be reschedule. I would have had one really upset little boy had that been the case. Thankfully, they did!
My babies:

Harper entertained herself with the hymnal.  She really enjoyed watching all the kids and cheering on her bubba:

My sweet boy ready to go!  He had been practicing so much.  They sang a song, Oh come let us adore him, and then they each had a part to speak (I will post the video later, but for my memory his was "A is for the Angel who hovered round his bed" and then they all said, "On this wondrous night we celebrate, the night of Jesus' birth) and then played the bells. Precious!

So proud of our big boy!

Polar Express!

We took our traditional ride on the Polar Express this year!  Last year, Harper was sick and couldn't join us (neither could Trent for that matter), so we were excited to all go:

There were elves dancing on the train. Harper thought they were princesses (of course) and loved them:

After the train ride, we walked through the snow to get to the show:

They seem to change things up every year.  I wasn't overly thrilled with the changes this year (no Santa on the train, Hudson was very disappointed), to the point that we may forego this tradition going forward.  

They served a special drink to each of the kids:

To see Santa you had to go to the general store (another change I wasn't fond of). Harper chose not to see Santa (shocker), but Hudson loves the big guy!

Something else very exciting happened this night...more to come on that.