a BIG day

Sarah's dad is known to my children as Farmer Steve. He is a well known farmer here in Idaho and on previous visits to the area has taken Paxton and his cousins on rides in his tractor while he harvested mint. It was a really awesome experience that I know Paxton has never forgotten. Any time we drive past a field and Paxton sees a tractor he asks me if it's Farmer Steve.

Well, like Sarah, Farmer Steve is a sweetheart. In fact, since we have been here her parents go out of their way to buy the kids gifts, hang out with them and they even had us over (at Sarah's) for their family Thanksgiving dinner. They are good people.

Sarah told me earlier in the month that her Dad had a Santa suit and if we would want to do it, he would be happy to be Santa for the boys. I originally thought about an experience I had when I was little about Santa coming to our house to find out what we wanted for Christmas. Really though, I was pretty old and it was pretty obvious that it was brother Doctor...and for a teenager to sit on his lap was way awkward...but it was great for my younger siblings.

Sarah had stories about hearing Santa's bells outside the house and seeing his sleigh lights take off down the lane as the sleigh took off. She told me that her Dad already had some idea's about how to do it and to let them know what we wanted to do.

After further discussion, we knew that it had better be a good idea to have the boys write Santa a letter instead of having him go to the mall to see him. Paxton is at that age where he catches everything, notices every detail and I didn't want him to wonder why farmer Steve Santa didn't look like the Macy's Santa.

So Sarah called me and told me that one idea they had would be for the boys to write Santa a letter and Santa could show up at our house with their letters...I thought it was a great idea!

So we had the boys write their letters to Santa. They were really excited about the whole idea

They colored pictures (Gauge did) and they wrote letters They addressed the envelope to the North Pole...they even stamped it and off the letters went

all the way to the North Pole for Santa to see.

It's all they could talk about. Paxton did realize that I had not taken him to "see" Santa and he tried to give me some tips that maybe he wanted to go see him, so I think this helped to put his mind at ease as well.

After the letters...we went to a Birthday party for Dan.

Dan and Sarah are crazy awesome at parties. We have them over to our house for dinners and I can't imagine what they are thinking because they are so amateur compared to these shin digs. Dan and Sarah have food out, (stuffed mushrooms) other snacks..they are rolling dough and all sorts of fancy. You just feel fancy being there. The kids couldn't get enough of the Christmas decor, especially Gauge. He loved their Christmas tree.We did homemade pizza's one of my favorite things! They all turned out really well.

Christmas Vacation was on, and all of Sarah's family was there to join in the celebrations. Its been nice hanging out with her family and getting to know them. Her parents are so much fun and they just eat up with kid stuff. They are so good to our children!

Shelby gets around pretty well these days! That walker only provokes the problem!

Dan being sung happy birthday. Its really cute, the Moody's have their own birthday song that they sing, and its really long. Paxton tried to sing the whole way through and Sarah and Beth laugh and yell and make the whole thing fun.

Poor Dan. He had two little boys on his tail all night. Paxton would barely let him open his own gifts. They were so excited for him!

Pax, waiting to hand Dan another gift

they are a pretty good team, even Shelby got into the mix

The kids had a lot of fun. I am not sure how much the Moody's really like having our crazy kids around, they can be a lot to handle. But if the kids do get to them, they never show it. They were so much fun the whole time.

During the party Steve, Ryan and Sarah got together to figure out what to do with Santa. With all of the experience Steve has had doing this he already knew it wouldn't be a good idea for Paxton to see him because he would probably recognize him. We handed him the letters that the boys wrote to Santa and he said he would be by. So, we planned on hearing some bells and leaving the rest up to Santa.

Dan, Happy Birthday Man! Thanks for letting us be part of your Day, we loved it! We love you!