It definitely wasn't a typical Christmas Eve activity, at least for us, although some folks have been doing it for years.

NORAD tracks Santa was something fun to do and connected us with all kinds of folks around the world (literally).

While I took a shot answering media questions (and was live on the radio in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and Glasgow, Scotland), my wife, Lura Lee, and daughter, Alicia, answered phone calls. At the same time, there were about 100 others doing the same as my wife and daughter, some answering phone calls, some answering e-mails. Everybody wanting to know, "Where is Santa?"

As the story goes, back in 1955, Sears ran an ad in the Gazette with a phone number to call Santa. There was a typo and instead of getting Santa, the line went through to the commander of air operations, Col. Harry Shoup, at the precursor of NORAD. As the calls came in, Shoup instructed his radar operators to locate Santa and let the children know where Santa was. Every Christmas since then, NORAD has tracked Santa.

To supplement the live phone calls and e-mail responses, there was a great Web site, www.NORADSanta.org, which had games, information and the live SantaCam and GoogleEarth map of where Santa was.

Just listening, I'm sure that many of the callers had ones similar to those who my daughter answered. One mother wanted her children to be good and go to bed, but "Sorry, we just track Santa, we can't enforce his policies." Or the 92-year-old woman who has always wanted to meet Santa every since he left her a gift-with her name on it- when she was two back in 1917.

Before I left to pick up Fox News at 7 p.m., someone said that they had officially answered over 56,000 phone calls and messages, a record. And there were still hours to go.