What a difference a year makes!

Last year.


This year.


Christmas 2006 .... Claire's first visit to see Santa.

We had such a fun family night tonight. After work, I raced home to put the kids in their Christmas outfits and we headed to the mall to see Santa. I highly recommend going early-December on a weeknight. There was nobody there and we had Santa all to ourselves. We got to take a lot of pictures and Claire actually got to talk to Santa instead of being herded through like we were last year after we had waited an hour in line to see Santa.

We really talked Santa up to Claire on our way to the mall. We did not want another episode like last year. We told her that Santa was her friend and he was going to bring her presents so she needed to sit on his lap and tell him what she wanted for Christmas ... and, we bribed her with candy. It seemed to work. I think seeing David sit in Santa's lap first helped too. If baby brother can do it, so can she.

After our visit with Santa, we headed to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner and then went and got our free mini-cones of gelato thanks to a coupon from Santa. Claire talked about Santa the whole time we were there and we stopped to tell him good-bye on our way to the car. He was the nicest Santa ever (so far) and he remembered both of the kids' names.