have always loved christmas and christmas lights and so forth and back after we got married i went back on the farm and and i just happened to spot some christmas lights in a bar and i said to my dad i our little grand niece jenny went she was a toddler went to disney world and she was in love with small world talked about it all the time and when her parents brought her to visit us she stood out in our garden when she went oh santa land she just thought that was like another small world oh so that's where we got the name from the little three year old girl that's the best way i know she's going to be a mommy so it's a little while to get her little girl or  well it was like you know we ran ads in the paper and right at the end of the christmas season and we would go around to different places and and buy you know things from different residents able to purchase and it kind of doubled my santa land at that point in time and since then it's just been grown and grown on a yearly basis you know i watched it growing and you know what or he would tell me this is it can't fit anymore and they are not going to buy any more ever heard come from every tell me came home with a bag i would think oh my gosh what are we going to do you know something different but interesting find a box in the  don't want to see your christmas tree know side of the house pretty well decorated really does the inside out there doubts about how many lights and figurines well the last count which was probably a couple  twenty seven thirty three services into the house and what we're going to do with the yeah yeah so it was quite a quite a chore we had the house rewired three or four different times to keep up with the additions all the time yeah well first of all if you up we we cooked it for a few just for a year or so but then we fell in love with the salvation army project bundle up my father was a pittsburgh  always man and he said to me once when i was little if you're ever going to work for a charity do it for the salvation army because they're there for anything anything that goes wrong or the first ones there with the coffee and the blankets and and i particularly love the project bundle up because they give coats gloves and scarves and hats and boots to kids and their families really can't afford them for it and they also take care of the elderly who can't afford it anymore and i just think it's wonderful and they are dedicated to what they're doing truly we've been to some of their functions and they're just wonderful people absolutely wonderful and most every dollar that you give how much percentage goes right to the cause ninety two percent goes right to the right right to the cause you know and you can't say that with a lot of the other ones through and that they don't have a bigger  without their help a lot of them would never never taken place over here and there again their charity is wonderful they have a town in illinois called moose heart and they raise children orphaned children from infancy to call it and they live in like group homes they have a real home setting and this is all funded by these charities and they also have a place called moose haven in florida for the elderly so i mean that it's another very good cause and we've we've done well in picking the two good chairs yes we have well it's very rewarding to be able to say that you have helped so many it's so many  when you can see the little kids and how excited they are and this and the one night car came by and the mother went there santa now you know the kid had gotten into his gift then walk back and they did and it's kind of like you know santa is out there with a flashlight making sure the cars are gone and yeah they would come and walk up and down the driveway and around the display so it was it was it was nice to have that to me decided to dismantle santa land well first you had to make up your mind to do it sometime and thirty six years was a long time and it was getting burned out and a of how many people that you have influenced and made happy and you know just brought the whole season why in that's wonderful if you have very pleasant memories meet i'm someone who cares about smiles and i live in work in your community i'm the one who puts a smile on your child's face i'm an orthodontist specialist who correct crooked teeth misaligned jaws and dental irregularities i received an additional two to three years of specialized education beyond all school i'm the maker of healthy beautiful smiles for more information visit braces dot org the stuff and people have been stopping by purchasing it and we still have a few lights to be sold but that's it just comes to an end we'll be able to maybe sit back and enjoy a little bit of the christmases nonstate are working so hard he lot next to us and it gave us an extra acre so we had actually an acre and a half of santa land and there's a garage in the back and it said double garage and it takes just about all that to stor top that's that's how we did it because some of the some of the figurines in that were pretty good size yes they were i always always said when we packed it was never in the air space bulletin so they were regular there just something that you thought up every year or so i mean yeah yeah we would we would move things around from like i said previously we had different areas that we would have like senna's village and and the  igloos with the penguins around it and so forth so you know we would move things around and change it and different little themes in amongst the santa land picture itself yes that was fun just doing that it was the hardest part is getting the power to  house always a big torch or ok and did you get any feedback from the community oh yeah we've we've had a lot especially when they found out that santa land was not going to be existing anymore  t people would come by and say hey why are you doing that you know we live for santa land year after year they come out and lot of them would say when they were young and their parents or grandparents would bring them to see santa land when they were just a little girl little boy and they actually got all choked up when they found out that it wasn't going to happen and so it's gone two or three generations with with the young kids coming back year after year people would come that's right the pictures that we're still pictures that we have were taken viral next door neighbor jenny and she made us to do the full albums will always have them on wonder they were really really beautiful now they're the ones that are going to continue to do this on a small scale with a lot that we had purchased earlier they may now have want to be using a part of that lot so you know it's now their little santa land is going to come moving over our next year will be surprised to see what they have in their mind too to expand there's there's a display you notice them mr and mrs santa claus in the window in the house over the garage they are guests in our water out of before the flight properly then you have snow on top of the you have to go out with a broom and knock all the snow off before the flight properly so there was a lot of maintenance every day every week you had the maintenance of going out some would burn out you know you're replacing hundreds of light bulbs every year hundreds of light bulbs you know long with you know forty fifty different strings you would have to just throw them away it's easy to throw them away and try to fix and thankfully made so it was just one of those situations where the expense got a little you know mark spence of every year to do it and it was just one of those things we had to say no to say it's coming to an end we had to stay home all the time too we couldn't really go out unless somewhere someone there to watch it well yeah you know we would have people babysit the house if we ever wanted to go out because you know you've got to donation can and you've got to watch for vandalism and then a couple your yeah a couple years ago we had put in some security cameras and we put some signs up stating you know twenty four hour surveillance cameras so that really worked well in the last few years it's been nice peace and quiet we have had all we had all very little trouble but when you did have it it just hurts so badly you know  was just a good time to do and then a lot of friends would come and would have a good time and and it was always free beer you know free beer always always got a few to come in yeah you know that never wouldn't come in otherwise to guess yeah well we're like we said before we're probably going to go around and see other people's christmas displays i think i'd like to go out and watch them  thousand twenty thousand yeah i don't know this is the sevens in the manager so i started getting smarter i started going into the managers as time went on helps a little bit on electricity yeah