All Things December . . . .

Davis has been particularly aware of books talking about seasons and made the correlation to the unfortunate LACK of "typical" season type events in AZ. aka "Why don't we have piles of orange leaves?" "When will we have snow here?". Anyway - he was excited to see some slightly brownish leaves on one of my mother-in-law's trees. She let them shakes the leaves off the tree and rake them up into a small pile. They then threw them over their heads and lived out their "fall" dreams!! haha

So Davis wants absolutely nothing to do with the Santa tradition. He couldn't rationalize Santa even last year and asked flat out if he was real or not and wanted a full explanation of how that was possible. We decided not to fib to our kids about Santa if it came up and for Davis it came up early. The logic just wasn't there for him. Parker, however, still thinks it is fun. He wanted to go see Santa at the mall. After a very direct conversation with Davis about absolutely NOT mentioning anything about Santa wearing a costume while in line, I hauled the kids to see mall Santa. Davis was refusing to even go through the line - looking at me like it was insulting his intelligence to pretend. Once Parker got up there and Davis realized Parker was getting a photo, he decided he wanted to be in the picture too. Santa says to Davis, "So what do you want for Christmas?" Davis gives Santa an exaggerated wink (yes . . wink!!) and says, "How about I just tell my mom." - as if to make it clear that Santa was pulling anything over on him. Ahhhh, Davis. Classic.

Finally zoo lights with our neighbors. Davis took the picture of the lion - it was his favorite. My kids love Christmas lights and really, really loved them this year. Grayson would gasp like he had never seen a light before every time he saw a new lit house.

We also took the kids to walk a fun street in Mesa. They had a house on the street that opened up their backyard to a beautiful "walk through Bethlehem". They really did an amazing job. Each of the major events of the birth of Christ is portrayed with pictures, displays and scriptures all the way through to the death and resurrection of Christ as the reason why he was born. My boys all really liked it. Parker LOVED the sheep and shepherds. In a big grass area the guy had a fake camp fire surrounded by probably 100 little wooden sheep and it really did look like a flock out at night. Parker loves that part of the story and jumps in when the angel appears to add that the angel told the shepherds to "not be afraid". Davis asked later, "Do you think those people did that so that people who don't know Jesus would know about him?". I said, "well yes, I think that that is what they are hoping." He says, "Well how come we just lights on our house then? Don't you think we should get some big signs that say 'You need to read the Bible because you need to know about Jesus'." Yep - good thought D :) I love that is so simple and obvious to them.