A Visit from Santa

I finally got my kids' pictures with Santa Claus! Right before Thanksgiving, I took my kids to the mall in Hagerstown because I knew that they had a Santa already. I thought that I would get a picture of them with Santa, until I found out that it was gonna set me back fifteen dollars for one measly four-by-six inch photo. Is that ridiculous or what?


However, Santa decided to make a stop at our subdivision on a fire truck! We were very excited! The kids had a blast, and they even got to sit in the fire engine. Andrew was absolutely ecstatic about sitting in the fire truck. I guess we have a future fire fighter in our family.





The problem that we have faced as our kids have gone around visiting Santa, is that all they seem to want for Christmas is a "Handy Dandy Notebook." This is a problem, because they don't make them anymore. They each got one last year for Christmas because we were able to find them on Ebay for about ten dollars. But this year, the cheapest I have been able to find is twenty. So that would mean forty dollars plus shipping for NOTEBOOKS. I made them notebooks for Halloween, but it was a huge hassle that I am not willing to go through again. I keep trying to explain to my children that there are no Handy Dandy Notebooks for sale, but they just say, "But I want a notebook for Christmas, just like I got last year."

Another problem is that last year, they had torn the notebooks apart within a month. They have wipeoff pages, so it's not like the pages would get all used up. It's just that my kids destroy everything. They seriously ripped out all of the pages. So, I am not paying forty bucks for notebooks that they are just going to destroy in seconds. I'm a little nervous about Christmas this year, though. I really hope that my kids will be too excited about all of their other presents to be concerned about these notebooks. But what if they aren't? How do I explain to a toddler that Santa can't make him a notebook? How am I supposed to handle a toddler who doesn't want any of his other presents because they aren't a Handy Dandy Notebook? EEeek!