Santa Claus is Coming to Town!

Christmas is in the air. :) After Thanksgiving Rachel went with Jared to see if the line to visit Santa at the mall was too long. It wasn't terrible so we waited and Jared had the "pleasure" of meeting the big guy.

When Jared refused to sit on the big guy's lap, Todd stepped up to fill the vacancy. :) Rachel did much better than she did last year and gave some fake smiles for the camera:

When Santa asked what she wants for Christmas she promptly answered, "A puppy." We have tempered her expectations by talking about the toy puppy Santa's bringing.

Last weekend we had our ward Christmas party and Santa Claus showed up at the end for a little visit, too. Rachel was happy to hop up on his lap and tell him about the puppy she wants all over again. And she was especially excited that he gave her a candy cane this time.

We've been decking the halls at our house and it's about as decorated as it's going to get this year. I love having all the Christmas decorations out, mint M&Ms, and Christmas music. It really makes it feel like Christmas (even when I sweat when we go outside to play).

Rachel was a great helper in decorating the tree this year. And undecorating, and redecorating, and undecorating.... We've set some rules about which ornaments cannot be removed and she mostly leaves them alone now.

On a completely unrelated note, the other day after watching her Dora movie that she got for her birthday (which is all about pirates) Rachel came to me as I was doing the laundry and said, "Mom, I need a pirate costume." Luckily I just happened to have one on hand.

After I taught her some pirate talk ("Aarrgh. Ahoy mateys" and the like), Rachel walked around for a good while saying "Ahoy, ladies. Aarrrgh."