[Cerek the Barbaric]

I believed in Santa until I was around 8 or 9. My cousin was the one that spoiled it for me. I missed the "magic" that believing in Santa brought, but now that I have kids of my own, I have recaptured that feeling.

My wife always uses special paper for the gifts from Santa, but we also put gifts under the tree from us too. But as Nanobyte pointed out, my oldest one will soon be able to recognize the handwriting is the same on all the packages. No problem....Daddy has Printmaster I'll use it to print up the labels from Santa next year.

We don't have to worry about the kids finding Santa's gifts, because I hide them at work so there is no chance for them to accidentaly stumble across them.

I also pulled a trick last year that I had been planning since before we even had kids. I went to a local store and bought a pair of black rubber boots....then stuck one in between the glass doors on our fireplace. When the kids woke up on Christmas morning, it looked like Santa had gotten his foot stuck in the door as he was going back up the chimney, and that his boot had been left behind. [img]graemlins/showoff.gif[/img] When I asked the boys what we should do with the boot, they said we would have to give it back to Santa the next year....but they were so tired this Christmas Eve that they forgot to do that. So I hid the boot. If they ask, I will tell them that I DID remember to set it out for Santa, and it was gone the next day...so he must have taken it.

Of course, I'm also a practical type of guy...I have the other boot at work and I made sure that I bought a pair that would actually fit ME once I no longer have to keep up the charade of them belonging to Santa.