Santa and Dinners

Our school had pizza with santa.  For $15 we got a whole pizza, salad, juice boxes, cake and two crafts for the kids to do.  The kids loved it, but Santa was more disappointing than a ward party santa, but my sweet 5 year old didn't mind, or notice. He was trilled to find out that he wasn't on the Naughty List, and reminded me of that for a week.  I would have rather spent more money on the night and had a nicer looking santa.   I got purposely took the picture so you wouldn't notice, that Santa looked like they picked up a homeless man.

 My daughter was terrified of Santa, so she didn't want to join in the fun of Santa, but loved the rest of the night.  We could have also seen the Grinch, but he was even more terrifying than Santa, to both kids.

Then the following week went to the church party and saw Santa again.  It was great, I accidentally poked J in the face right before his turn, and once again we had a terrified daughter.

I believe that is also our community Santa.  Our small town does their own Toy for Tots, where the police department, fire, and local school collect toys, then Santa has commissioned our Chief of Police to deliver the toys. We go to church with the Chief.  Every year I want to buy toys for my kids to give to charity, and never do, this year I finally did.  J totally got it, Nan was very sad to see the huge box of toys and walk away from it.  We talked about sharing, and the importance of giving to those who need help.  J told me for a few days how happy he was to share.  At one point I thought why don't I just drop the toys in the box for toys for tots and save me the hassle.  But I like to start on community level first and go up for there, I wanted to help my community be self sufficient, plus I think it made more sense to the kids to not drop the toys of at the store we bought them.