Seeing Santa...

We don't have a super strict Santa tradition around our house like some of our friends in the Atlanta-area do. We don't need to see the same one each year (it's not really even possible for us, I don't think...) or be in a super fancy mall to see him. Our boys have generally never taken their lists to discuss with him. They also know that all Santas are different because they are helper Santas. This year, I wasn't even sure we would see Santa. A friend of ours has been trained at Santa School (for real) and has been Santa for a few years now. He traveled to our church last year from Virginia and we got him to come again this year...and then the world fell apart. We still planned to have him come and things had SEEMED to be on the upswing for our area, but Thanksgiving backed us up a little bit and things went back into lockdown-mode. Our church made the decision to go virtual again for a few weeks and Santa's visit was right in the middle of that. Because his mother lives nearby, he decided to make the trip anyway. He wound up partnering with a photographer we've used many times before and we booked a mini session to see him AND get better photos than I would have normally achieved. I am IN LOVE. What you cannot hear are the discussions about girls that they like and what gives the reindeer gas, but their smiles are genuine (even the tween's who is grumpy often and did NOT want to see Santa this year...). I'll treasure these for a long time. We needed some normalcy in an otherwise abnormal year.