Santa Claus

Emery is starting to understand Christmas. She loves Christmas lights and gets so sad when we drive away from cheerily lit up homes. She likes our nativities and talks about baby Jesus. She recognizes Santa and is always excited to see him, but I don't think she knows why. She just knows she's excited. Maybe because she usually gets candy when he's around. 

At our ward Christmas party I was helping control the angry gang attempting to stampede and trample Santa Claus...um, I mean the beautiful children all standing perfectly in line waiting patiently to sit on Santa's lap, so Emery ran around with Gavin watching the other kids but not really caring about having her turn. When all the other kids were done we had her sit up on his lap and say hi. She hopped right up there, no problem. She rarely smiles for pictures so we encouraged her:

"Emery, smile! Come on, Smile! Say cheeese!"

This is the face we got:

 

Everyone bursts out laughing. It was so funny. So now she thinks this is standard Santa-lap-sitting-protocol. When Santa came to Gavin's work, again, "Emery, SMILE!" and again:

This Santa really got in to it. What a ham.