Jolly And..

My kids, especially Raegan, waffle back and forth on weather or not they think the Man in Red is a real personality, or just pretend. They question everything, and my response is usually something like " well what do YOU think?" and "well I was told that.." just so they can make the choice to believe in the magic or not, themselves. Last night we finally made the trip out to Eagle Crest to see the Jolly Red himself, and those two couldn't be more cute. Kael was all bashful quietness ( Kael... QUIET!) as he handed over his written and illustrated Christmas list, mumbling and blushing the whole time. Totally adorable. Raegan quietly walked up to take her turn, but refused to make eye contact when she was close and peeking out of the corner of her eye at Santa while fidgeting. Seriously. My kids. ( Santa was totally awesome, with a quiet voice and kind hands, keeping his eyes on the camera nearly the whole time as I clicked away trying to get some sort of picture. And I'll tell you right now, Santa seemed like the kind of guy who would take all those letters home and read them with a twinkle in his eye.It made me smile thinking of him reading Raegan's awesome letter about her present-worthy status. )

We got in the car afterwards to take the annual drive around looking at the light displays and Kael let us all know that Santa's beard wasn't real, it was a fake beard. After a round of discussion it was decided that maybe Santa had a knot in his beard hair, or he'd got soup all over it, and had had to cut it off? And he was probably embarassed about having to shave & was wearing a pretend beard so that no one would know, and we should probably not say anything so as to not hurt his feelings.

Now firmly on the "maybe he IS real" train of thought, nothing could have sealed the deal like our loop back through the light display on our way out.

A small herd of deer had decided on an evening snack among the light displays, many of them *right there* close to the road ( like, 5 feet away, maybe) not at all bothered by the cars driving by. My children's eyes got huge, their jaws dropped, and it was decided that Santa's Reindeer were just taking a munchy break to get their energy back for the long flight home after Santa had spoken with all of the kids. The deer combined with the sleigh parked in the corner ( to collect the donated canned goods) was all it took.

The Fat Man is real. So we're running with the magic this year....