Santa Claus

Click here to see last year's Santa pictures.What a difference a year makes! I refused to take Hannah somewhere and wait in a ridiculous line or pay lots of money to see Santa, after what happened last year. My mom found the perfect solution. The Irmo branch library has Santa come do a short story time with the kids and then you can take your picture with him. It was great. Hannah was so excited. She danced and jumped and flipped while she was waiting for Santa to arrive. She enjoyed listening to him read (and he did a great job) and then was like the 10th or so child to sit on his lap. It only took a few minutes for her turn. She immediately sat on his lap, with no hesitation, and let me take a picture. Then she got serious and told him what she wanted (pink kitty, pink toys, pink lollipop). Then she gave him a hug! Unfortunately I missed the first hug. My camera was acting funny (I thought the battery was dead) so luckily my mom had her new camera in her purse. Unlike my camera, it takes time between pictures. I was focused on trying to get it ready for the next picture and missed the original hug. She was a trooper though (and so was Santa) and hugged him again before she climbed down, so Mommy could capture it on film. I was so proud of her. After she was done we put on her jacket and said "are you ready to go?" She got a little upset and said "No! I want my pink toys!" It took a little convincing to get her to understand he would bring her toys on Christmas morning. She was a little reluctant to believe us. However, the whole "you have to be good so you're on Santa's good list" has taken a whole new meaning for her, now that she knows he's got her list!

Christmas Happenings

Now that school is out, maybe some of the craziness is momentarily stopped for me. I am ready to update this here blog!

Hannah is quite into Christmas this year and it's been fun so far. We started the season by heading to the local parade with her BFF Madeline. She was excited to see the parade, but caught on very quickly that she and Maddie kept getting skipped over for the candy. It really was quite unfair, but both girls ended up with a few pieces and were happy anyway.

Our tree decorating happened in several sessions. I got the tree mostly put up during Hannah's nap one Saturday afternoon, but the nap lasted only 30 minutes, and that was certainly not long enough to assemble it. I managed to get it finished, even with a 2 year old under my feet. Then came the lights. Ha. The bottom half of the tree got lit, while the top didn't. Gotta love tree lights, huh? It wasn't until the following Wednesday that I was able to get to the store and buy more. Hannah did put her ornaments on the bottom half of the tree though, so a few days we had a decorated bottom half. After I got the lights up, Hannah decided to help me with the other ornaments as well. She went and got a stool so she could reach up a little higher. Any ornament that was similar had to go on the same branch because they were "friends". Of course, as you see from the pictures, she had to wear her "sparkly dress" to decorate the tree. No matter what the temperature is, the dress has to come on as soon as we get home each day. I wanted to take her picture in front of the tree so she sat herself on the stool, arranged her dress over her legs, put her hands in her lap and cocked her head. Oh my.

Saturday night we went to the Lights at the Zoo. Bad night to go. Usually we go right after Christmas and it's not bad at all. This was the only opportunity we thought we'd get so we went. We sat in line on the interstate to get off at zoo exit for 30 minutes. We had to park away from the zoo and walk down to it (not even the regular overflow parking) and it was crazy crowded. Hannah loved it though and ran around from light to light, and looking for the animals. Luckily her favorites, the lions, were awake and quite active.
We celebrated Christmas yesterday with the Millers since Trip and Llora will be in Massachusetts, and Jessica and Grayson will be traveling in Europe on Christmas Day. I forgot my camera so you'll have to wait for pictures until I can steal them from my mom's camera.

We are visiting Santa at the library tonight (fingers crossed) so hopefully I'll have have a picture two to post tomorrow.

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