Santa's Village

There is a guy in our ward that does this crazy Christmas thing at his house each year. You can go and meet santa (my kids are afraid so we skip that part), then each kid can pick one toy. He open's his house to the entire community and thousands of people come each year. There are about 10 bins full of toys and each child can pick one toy to take home. Calvin is standing in front of a couple of the toy bins.

Then you can tour santas village and the house. The garage is decorated as Santa's shop.
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The house (which is probably 5000 sq. feet), is completely decorated with Christmas displays. Who knows where they live in the month of December! This is Calvin standing in front of their living room.


and more house pictures. I stood in front of this camel just so you can see how big the stuffed jungle room is. The elephant is HUGE!!


Santa's village, in the back yard, complete with a snow maker! side note: CLare is a nail biter. She does it all the time. how do I get her to stop? She has no nails at all. A couple of days ago I caught her trying to bite her toe nails!! YUCK!


There are refreshments as well. Hot chocolate, cider and cookies and crackers. Behind the refreshment tables is this amazing FAO Schwartz clock that is as tall as the two story house. It's probably my favorite thing there.

Clare picked a crown (with earrings) out of the toy boxes. She loves it! On the way home DAve told her that we'd be going to bed as soon as we got home. She said. "I am not clare, I'm Cinderella and Cinderella doesn't go to bed."
Then we told her she could sleep with her crown and she jumped for joy and went to bed easily.

We checked on her late at night and she was still a sleeping princess!

All of this is free! The guy who does this is so generous and it is quite remarkable.