Thankful for Family Days

Today I am thankful for fun family days. Mark works long hours, at work and at home, so family time is really cherished.

Yesterday we decided to take Eliza to go see Santa. Last Spring we went the Friday before Easter to see the Easter Bunny and we waited hours, it was not fun. This time we decided we were going early, unseasonably early, but we waited for less then 5 minutes in line.

Getting ready to go to the mall to see Santa

The mall has a super cute Santa area, it is set up to be a snow globe. You go inside the globe while waiting for Santa and you see a Snow Princess and snow falls from part of the ceiling. She was allowed to look and touch it but not play in it, you should have seen the kids who played in it...snow(Styrofoam) all in their hair.

Snow Princess

Playing with the snow

It was then our turn to see the big man. I had a plan, I was going to do it the same as I did with the Easter Bunny. I held Eliza so she faced me, while Mark stayed behind me talking to her, I walked up to Santa and said "Santa please don't talk", he nodded. I set her on his lap, and walked backwards away from her so she could always see my face. We grabbed Elmo and this is what we got...

Sorry, a picture of the picture.

 Not too shabby! No tears, half a smile(considering they take 3 pictures right after each other and you have to just pick, they don't give you time to get her to interact). When I went to pick her up I said thank you to Santa and he nodded, I said "oh you can talk now" he said "hi" Eliza WHIPPED around, looked at him, and flew off his lap. She never cried but she had no clue who this man was. She isn't much of a fan of men with facial hair.

Today we enjoyed some time running some errands and then went to a local Holiday event.

Eliza received her first Nativity Scene today. It is the Fisher Price Little People Nativity Set. She clearly does not understand it now, but she loves to play with it.

Later in the day we planned to go to the local Holiday event, we bundled up and headed out.

Reindeer shirt from http://www.etsy.com/people/InitialHereGifts

What most of her pictures look like

Her reaction when we told her where we were going, OK not really

We had a great time with each other. Tomorrow-church and Lions game!! There is a great deal at Target for the Little People Animal Sounds Zoo, if you are interested let me know and I'll send you all the info.