Naughty or Nice?

Every Christmas Eve the kids do a secret Santa. We put their names in a Santa hat and they blindly pick a name, head to the store, pull out their money and pay for the goods. This year they blindly picked a name, headed to the store and…ended up spilling the beans to each other. I suppose we screwed up by going as a family. Typically Seth and I will take them one-on-one but this year we went together. I was convinced we could still pull off the secrecy of it all - I was wrong.

Luckily, my munchkins still wanted to wrap the presents and wait to open them - apparently they love little traditions like I do. So we waited. Then, it was fun to see the sneaky little smiles on their faces as they opened their gifts, their facial expressions said that they knew a secret they weren't supposed to know - and they did.

Aren't they the cutest?

Then, they wrote their letter to Santa before going to bed. Owen got very serious about his letter this year, because he wanted to write it himself but he doesn't like his penmanship so he was getting very frustrated the he was writing, "big."

But with a lot of concentration...

and despite several interruptions...

...he persevered and completed his letter like a true champ.

Ari wrote one too. But Ethan wasn't game. So Ari left this for Santa to explain why there was no letter from E (Ethan is not participating sorry). And Owen added his two cents on the bottom half of the paper (He is being naughty Ethan).

Do you like how the little ones totally sold him out? Harsh. Look at them, every time those two are getting along I'm convinced they are plotting and up to no good.

And I don't know if you've noticed the santa hat that Ari is rockin' but that kid wore it everywhere, I think that thing was on her head for at least a week straight. She wore it to the store (yes, I  let her wear it in public), she wore it at the park, she even wore the thing to bed a time or two. 

Owen also wore his Santa hat, just not nearly as much as Ari wore hers.

Instead, he opted to sport a less obvious ode to Santa...

Yep, that's a scotch tape beard.


And despite the fact that they threw E under the bus when it came to Santa-letter-writing-time..

They really do all get along...

Ah legos, thank you for being the ultimate sibling-bonder in the Rumbarger home.


Lorri