12-16-12 AMOOXP Day 22

1997

Nope. Sam is still not a fan of Santa this year, either.

The Mask Grandkids

Nicholas, now in pre-k with Muna as his teacher, plays a very pensive Santa in the school Christmas play.

Samantha, also invited to the class' party, does her best "Get that camera out of my face so I can eat my cookies" look here.

Howdy Ma'am

In October of this year, Lady passed away unexpectedly. In November, Ian came into the family and would stay for the next ten years. They guessed him to be around 7 when we adopted him. Like Sam, he was not a fan of the camera and would turn away any time he saw one. We learned to film him from corners out of sight.

Nicholas doing his best Elaine "Little Kicks" dancing

We still did home photo shoots

And the first good professional one!

While Santa will still a no-go, Samantha was getting better at photographers in general, although I'm sure it helped that we did these at Muna's daycare in a familiar environment.

The real live Santa showed up at our house for the first time this year before the kids were in bed and she handled him pretty well, as long as she didn't have to get out of my lap.

(Now the odd thing here is that I'm snapping away during milk and cookies and I can't find a single one in the scrapbooks.)

Step aside, kids, Mommy's playing

This is the castle Nicholas was certain Santa forgot to leave him.

These last two presents on the tape, the big Tonka trunk and the Huff and Puff Vacuum,  were presents from Mammammy and Granddaddy. Mammammy had fallen earlier that month and wasn't able to travel. We went down to Houston a few days later and visited, unaware it would be the last time. Mammammy passed away from a stroke on New Year's Eve.