Joel "Santa's" House

There is a man in our city who has these model trains that run all through his house. He's even cut out holes in his walls for them to go from room to room. For basically his whole life, he's collected little houses and people and animals to set amongst them. His name is Joel Sanda, but people call him Joel Santa, because he opens up his house three nights a week during Christmas time for people to look at his displays. He has so many little houses and buildings that he switches them out every year. You never see the same display twice at his house. Many preschools go to his house as a field trip. Each room in his house has a different theme. His front room is the carnival room. Here's Dylan in that room:

And Ben and Sadie in that same room:

Here are Dylan and Sadie in the Halloween room. I know it's not very Christmasey, but his entire basement is the Christmas room, so I'm cool with the different themes. The Halloween room is cool, because most of the houses and props in that room are fiberoptic. So you can turn off the lights, and the room is so cool. Joel says it's everyone's favorite room:

We just had to take a picture of these, which were in the Christmas room - a miniature version of the infamous leg lamp in The Christmas Story, one of the funniest movies of all time, and a Christmas Story-themed Monopoly game. "It's a major award!" "Fragile! It must be Italian!"

Not pictured is the clown room. I think it was really busy when we were in there, so we didn't want to try to get any pictures while people were always in the frame. Going to Joel Sanda's was a fun thing to do for Family Home Evening. He's so sweet to open his home to basically the whole city.