Santa!

I took Katherine to see Santa Friday morning. I figured the crowds would be much lighter on a weekday and I was right. We first encountered Santa on our way to the restroom at the mall. As we were walking into the women's bathroom, we heard jingling coming from the men's room. Two seconds later, who should appear but the Big Guy himself (wouldn't I be shocked if the jingle bells weren't from Santa but some merry shopper). He stopped and said hello to Katherine, who just beamed back at him. Took some weight off of me as I quickly realized she wasn't afraid of him. He informed that he had just been feeding his reindeer (make your own joke out of that one).

We were luckily enough to be first in line to see him at the official Santa place. Again when he came out Miss K. started grinning from ear to ear. She went right up to him and said hello. The only she refused to do was sit on his lap, she was fine interacting with as long as she was on her own two feet. I told the person with the camera to just take pictures and not worry about the perfect lap shot, we'd just see what we got. The first two pictures were pure K. poses, the fact that Santa was in the shot was of no consequence to her (think Bill and Bryn's wedding). The third one they took was the keeper:

Yup, that's her back your seeing. But see that present in front of Santa? It was part of the decorations next to him. Katherine picked it up and brought it over to Santa to give to him. You can't tell cause the picture is small but Santa is smiling at her for giving him a present and she is grinning from ear to ear right back at him, very proud of herself. How could I not purchase the picture that captured that moment, even if it is of her back? After that, I felt our time with Santa was up, after all there were other children waiting, even though Santa and the staff were super nice and probably would have let us stay for another minute or two to try to get that perfect shot. And I swear to you, put the lady who was taking the pictures in an elf costume and you would have gotten..."we've got a lot people waiting little boy, so get moving!" (only in looks though, she was really sweet). Katherine very cutely said "Bye Santa!", we paid for our pictures (its not cheap to see Santa these days) and we were off. Being the nice Mom that I am, we took a walk over to the mall play area for a bit.

Combine that with an after nap library trip and all in all, it was a fun and busy Friday for Miss K. Saturday and Sunday were the usual weekend fair. As we head into a new week I owe all of you two things: 1. an November photo album 2.Pictures of the decorated living room. Both will be completed by mid-week!