Santa Clause is coming....to MY house!!!

Amidst all the last minute running around and baking and general holiday craziness....I decided to host a Santa party on Sunday.  I know...who does that.  Me, apparently.  I just thought it fit in with all the last minute things to do....heck why not host a party on the fly?

I officially presented this as a Sips, Snacks and Santa party, and asked everyone to bring a little beverage and a snack.  I didn't care what it was...champagne and cookies, beer and pork rinds, soda and chips, crust of bread and water.....I didn't really care!  This gave me the opportunity to relax a tad as I wasn't responsible for totally feeding everyone....and turned out to be good for others too since they recently had holiday parties and they unloaded some of their leftovers.  Sweet!  I don't mind!  Bring those cookies!

So Hunter and Jagger's cute little neighborhood friends came over, as did my sister in law and niece, Mia, and the G-rents.  My Father in law has the whole get-up, I mean, "SANTA" has the whole get-up, and we were able to pull it off delightfully.  The kids were a little nervous at first, but Santa did such a good job of playing it cool....not even saying a word or making one noise when he first came in.  He was quiet, subdued, and just waved and patted a few head and let all the adults give him big hugs.  Here he is being the calm Santa....look good huh?

Hunter would run up to him and yell "SANTA!!!" then run away.  As soon as Santa busted out the candy canes....Hunter allowed some high five action.  Then pretty soon Hunter was warming up and hugging him and and jumping in other peoples pictures and playing with Santa.  It was pretty funny.  Jagger loved him right away.  They even got to take a brother pic, and t turned out REALLY great. Totally makes up for the mall one!

 

{Jagger lovin' on Santa right away}





{Oh candy canes!  You ARE pretty cool, Mr. Clause}




{our neighbor, Sawyer, eating and totally in awe...so cute!}



{Family pics!}



{Getting a little closer!}



{FINALLY!!!!}

And here's the little dude jumping in pics and cheesing it up.  Hilarity.  He's just like his Mother.

I also thought it would be fun to have the kids decorate some gingerbread houses.  I found gingerbread graham crackers and thought I'd do easy little graham houses.  To make it easier for the kiddos I pre-assembled them....yeah...not that easy.  Sonny was so kind in saying that my little houses looked like vacant crack houses.  So this is "Crack Alley"....

They were a little jank...but I didn't care all that much since they would soon be covered in frosting and sprinkles!!  Mia and our other neighbor girl got the concept right away....Hunter seemed a little more interested in eating the candies.  But, being the anal retentive child that he is....he highly enjoyed putting the M&Ms in a line on the roof.

{I got it mom..I got it...lemme do it....}

When Hunter realized that the frosting was edible.....

And TA DA!! The finished house!!! 

And then Hunter realized that the whole house was edible.  Why waste time breaking it apart?  It's so much easier to eat it this way..

Quite a fun last minute party!  Turned out great and all the kids were so great with Santa...very minimal tears!  I think this might turn into a yearly tradition!