with a round little belly, that shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly

we had a really special visitor today, who came right to our front door.

you should have seen caleb's face when he heard the jingling of his bells outside.

during his visit,

he tickled caleb with his beard...

showed us what happened to rudolph's nose
(if the picture wasn't B&W you'd be able to see it glow (like a lightbulb!))...

read a story about the true meaning of christmas...

gave caleb a special bell, like the one from the polar express...
(which we will now have him watch, oops.)

while miss leah stayed occupied with the goods...
(don't worry folks, the plastic is still on. i may let my daughter eat stuff off of the bathroom floor in target, but by heavens she will NOT have processed sugar!)

and they all posed for a picture before saying goodbye... (doesn't leah just look elated? she could hardly contain her excitement. in her defense i had to awaken her from a deep slumber for her very 1st santy claus encounter. she was a little shell-shocked.)






the best part is that now caleb thinks i'm now in "santa's loop." so i have the threat of calling santa on the phone if he's not kind to his sister or obeys his mom and dad. (oh the power! i must not abuse it. but i sorta feel like frodo with the one ring that rules them all.)

the fear in his eyes is enough to make me want to buy a santa suit so we can whip that puppy out when caleb needs a strict talking-to.

we were so lucky that we had awesome brother goodwin from our ward who could make this visit possible. it sure beats the waiting in line to sit on his lap for 3 seconds while getting trigger happy with the camera to try to get a good shot. (i still went trigger happy, but this year actually got a good shot.)

thank you so much you jolly fella!