This was a big year for Santa.  Molly is five years old and into everything Santa and Christmas.  She fully knows that we celebrate Christmas as the birth of baby Jesus.  She will even tell you all about it if you ask, but she this is the first year that she has really been into the whole Santa thing.  I'm sure she remembers Santa bringing stuff last year and she doesn't have to rely on everyone else's memory or stories and she knows what to expect this year.  So when Santa was going to be having pancakes and pictures, she was all about going!




Not only that, but she also knows how to pick out a real Santa from a fake Santa.  After the breakfast with Santa day, we were in Walmart shopping.  Molly caught a glimpse of Santa walking around Walmart and told me she wanted to go see him.  We went that way.  We got up closer to Santa and he started coming right to Molly.  She was checking him out too.  He walked up to her and said, "Ho Ho Ho.  Would you like a candy cane?"  He pulled one out of his bag.

Molly said "No Thank you."  Then we walked off.

Not even out of earshot of Santa, Molly said, "That's a fake Santa!"  I asked her why she thought that. She said that Santa has black boots - not brown.  Santa has white eye brows - not black, and Santa doesn't carry a purse!  She decided, on her own, that he was just one of Santa's helpers handing out candy canes, but definitely not the real Santa.


Sophie on the other hand...at eleven years old, has been questioning the Santa thing quite a bit.  The last couple of years she has heard it at school and has come home and asked me about if Santa was real.  I always told her that Santa is real only if you believe.  I thought that would cover me and that I wasn't lying to her, but I didn't want her NOT to believe because it is the magic of Christmas.  This year she asked Sadie about it too, so I know she has been having doubts, but then she would be so excited waiting for Ella the elf to come every year and that would blow my mind that she didn't question that but questioned Santa??

So then one day, Sophie tells me that MRS VERNA had gotten an elf on the shelf for her kids at the daycare.  She asked Sophie, "Do yall hide your elf easy for the kids to find, or hard?" Then on the same day or the next day, she told Sophie that her grandson Corey was going to play Santa for the kids Christmas party this year.  Sophie looked at Verna strange, (like Corey that I have known all my life is going to be Santa at the Christmas party??)  Verna told Sophie, "What? You don't still believe in Santa, do you?"

I don't know whose heart was more broken, hers or mine.  She told me about it.  I bit my tongue and told her that sometimes when you get old, you just quit believing in Santa and that I hope that she doesn't ever quit believing.
She has played along this year, but she didn't want to go to breakfast with Santa or to the Christmas party at Verna's this year, so I didn't make her.  Luckily, Corey couldn't play Santa at the Christmas party because Molly would have busted him out too because she has known Corey all of her little life, but that means I got no pictures of Sophie with Santa this year.  None.