Merry Christmas!

Well we made our annual trek to the city to see santa. In the past we've gone to Ogden or Provo so we decided to go to Salt Lake and hit the Fashion Place Mall. The whole way down Hayden kept asking if we were at the North Pole Yet and Gracie was almost in tears because she was so nervous. If you know my husband at all you know that it's a huge effort for him to even go to Salt Lake or anywhere for that matter. He doesn't like to go to "the city" at all. Of course on the Saturday before Christmas everything was packed. It took us at least half an hour just to navigate the parking lot and then the one open space we found was out in the north forty. But still he remained calm. So we made our way through the mall to where Santa was and were surprised to see that the line wasn't really that bad. So we went to where we thought the end of the line was and asked if this was the line and a girl said you have to get a pager before you can wait in line She waved one of those little blinkie things they give you when you are waiting for a table at a restaurant. So we found an elf that told us you had to wait in line to get a pager first then when it goes off you can get in the Santa line. Crazy! When did Santa get so high tech? It actually wasn't that bad. We were able to walk around the mall a little and get something to eat rather than standing in a huge line all day. But of course once we got our food and sat down our pager went off. Here is the picture. ( I've got to get a scanner so I can stop taking pictures of pictures!) Of course Hayden wasn't looking at the camera and Chandler was screaming. I hope she wasn't too traumatized. Gracie and Hayden turned out okay and we have 3 or 4 identical pictures of each of them crying on Santa's lap. I've been trying to prepare her by showing her pictures of Santa and saying HO HO HO a lot but obviously it had no effect. Anyway the girls finally got to ask Santa for what they wanted and even threw in a couple surprises that mom and dad didn't know about. And the best part of the whole day is that we spent an entire day in Salt Lake shopping and Greg stayed cool, calm and collected the whole time. No meltdowns and no profanity! Hooray for daddy! I also had to throw in some pictures of Gracie and Hayden putting ornaments on the tree and Chandler taking them off. The tree has only been rearranged about 50 times since we put it up. So tomorrow is th big day and we're so excited! We want to wish everyone Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!