Warming him up to the whole Santa idea...

We recently took a quick trip out to Hardy's Reindeer Ranch to make our Christmas experience just a tad bit better and it worked! We first heard of the place a few years back when I had a work party there. Clarification: I didn't work there - they just have banquet hall and catering service there. Good food, very, um, "local" entertainment. Neal took pity on the entertainer and bought his CD (you know it is a winner when there is a song about WalMart in there). But that was way before Aedan was born and at a time when I actually received a Christmas bonus so we were already pumped for the holiday.

Last year I went with Aedan and our friends from the 3 Nomads but it was getting dark when we took pictures. This year was much better although still very cold.
Aedan was thrilled to discover that the reindeer like to eat the same snacks he does - they gave us graham crackers to feed to these lovely reindeer ladies. The owner gave us a tour and spouted off a bunch of fun facts. These are really amazing animals. They aren't as big as I remember caribou to be but they were the right size for us.

They were incredibly gentle creatures. If ever I own a ranch, which I don't intend to do, I would love to raise reindeer. So some of the fun facts: when they walk their hooves actually click like the Christmas song says, females also grow antlers, their babies are usually 8-10 lb babies (I'd love to see that).

Aedan was in awe. He kept looking for Rudolf - turns out out of the 15 reindeer they have there only one bears the name of one of Santa's reindeer, Dancer. That's too bad. Neal would name one Vincent even though I keep reminding him that it is Vixen. I love you Neal!

It is just hard to have fun on a playground when it is cold outside. We picked a good day, upper 30s...

I was in desperate need of pics for the new blog layout and for our family newsletter. Just so happens there was a nice ol' fingerprint on the lens of our camera so a lot of these pics have a slight blurriness to them. Sigh... We left the place very content and a little purple in the face from the cold. We even watched Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer that evening.

We hope all the talk and stories are helping Aedan build up some courage to meet Santa. We have tickets to have lunch with Santa on a train ride this Saturday so hopefully he won't freak out. This was his reaction to Santa the past two years:

2006, "who is this guy and why does he reek of candy canes and deer droppings?!"

2007, a bit unsure but didn't lose control because his cool cousins were there.