Miriam and Liesl Meet Santa

This year was Miriam's third Christmas and her first Christmas to meet Santa.  It's just never been a big priority to me and honestly I still have mixed feelings about Santa anyway.  But she is old enough that she knows who he is now (a guy dressed in red who brings her presents -- what else is there to know!) and one of my childhood friends had invited Santa to her house for a few hours one Saturday morning.  No lines.  No pressure to buy a lousy picture.  No stress if she freaked out and wanted nothing to do with him.  Perfect.  So we went and lo and behold, she ran right for his lap.

After a few seconds I realized her bulky winter coat was putting a serious damper on my cute pictures, so we fixed that and added Liesl to the mix.  Liesl just stared and stared at him.  I'm sure she was wondering who the crazy man she was sitting with was.  She didn't cry though; just watched.

 Miriam with a cheesy camera grin -- not even bothering to look at the camera either.

Our ward party was later that night and Santa showed up there too.  I think she was a little confused.  I could almost hear her thoughts, "Wait, that isn't Santa.  We saw Santa this morning and his beard was short and grey.  And he had glasses on.  Who is this guy?"  She wouldn't even go near him until I picked her up and took her there myself.

Oh, and this Santa is the first counselor in our bishopric.  I laughed pretty hard when his own kids were scared. to. tears. of him. It's hard for a little kid to see past the costume.  Reminds me of the Halloween incident.