Santa Pics

We're so glad when Grandpa and Grandpa come to town!  We feel especially blessed this year to have them with us for Christmas.  Although, we have spent several years in Utah in and around the Christmas holidays, we have never been treated to having the Ballard grandparents join us here in Washington.  I believe it has been about the last 5 years that we opted to stay in Washington and make traditions of our own over the holidays and it has been a decision that we have embraced and gone with.  We found that it was just too hard to travel with small children hauling Christmas with us.  We also felt like the holidays were becoming about pleasing everyone else and not enjoying our own children through a glorious time of the year.  Having both Brian's parents and brother in Utah and then my parents and brother in Utah as well, it makes for us trying to see everyone, going from house to house and bed to bed and town to town.  Don't get me wrong here, they all do make it special for us, but it is just exhausting.  It doesn't mean that we don't miss our extended family during this time, it just means that we are adults and that we have decided to stay at our own home and makes things special.  This is not being selfish, it is being adult and making decisions for our family.  We were happy to share what we have done to make it special and to create tradition with Grammy and Grandpa this time.  With Brian's dad's retirement, it made it all possible this year and we appreciated them making the sacrifice to come our way and enjoy our children this holiday.  We know they had a lot of preparations, neighbor gifts and such to see about before they could join us.  It truly is busy trying to get out of town, and we realize that.  So, we say thank you to them!

We were happy that they could take the kids to the Super Mall for the afternoon and get pictures with Santa.  Brian and I in all our craziness had not finished our Christmas preparations and having Grandma and Grandpa to babysit the kids for a few hours was WONDERFUL!!!