The mall totally upped their game with the Santa experience this year. It started off with a meter that tells whether you are on the nice or naughty list. Connor made the nice list ;) And Isla refused to be tested. Next up was "elfing" ourselves. Connor didn't participate in this, but Isla and I became the heads of dancing elves. They even emailed us the video...of which Isla was totally entertained by and watched over and over and over and over again. Then we went into a room where they had a realistic setup of controlling Santa's sleigh. Connor totally dug this. It made noises and lit up. It was pretty neat. Also in that room were these monitors where you could see what was going on behind different doors...elves wrapping presents, etc. Then they took a family picture...I told Ian had I known, we could have skipped family pictures this year and just done that. I totally kid, but look how cute Isla looks in that picture! Then we were on to seeing Santa...
^^ Connor having a moment with Santa.
Isla did not want anywhere near Santa. In the first couple pictures, she was screaming. The photo girl was determined to get a good picture. I finally convinced Isla to stand next to Santa and she did it without crying. The photo girl wanted to keep trying, but I feel like each Santa photo kind of tells a story of that year. And it totally got me thinking about how traumatizing it must be for my kids to be thrust into the lap of a perfect stranger. It even sounds like torture when I describe it like that. But, they survived another year of it.
In case you care, here are the Santa pictures from years past - 2013, 2012 and 2011. I kind of love that they now provide the digital copies of the pictures. It makes posting them on my blog and putting them in picture books so much easier!
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