Santa's not so bad...

The three of us in Santa's sleigh

Not scared of Santa this year!

For the last couple of years I have taken Lily to see Santa. Every year she seems really excited, but as soon as we actually get near Santa everything changes! Last year she loved being around Mrs. Claus, but wouldn't take a step near the jolly old elf himself. I would always encourage her, but I never made her go (and she never did). So this year we went to tour the Festival of Lights in Oshkosh the day before we flew home. We knew that Santa would be in his "workshop" that night so we prepared Lily. And as usual she was really excited to see Santa. We started off by visiting his reindeer- which was my favorite part. The reindeer were really curious about my parents dog and my parents dog was really curious of (okay, agitated by) the reindeer. Then we posed for a picture in Santa's sleigh (as you can see above). And finally we made it into Santa's shop and what-do-ya-know- Lily was still excited. She went right up to Santa and happily sat in his lap. Santa asked her what she wants for Christmas and she had no idea how to respond (we've never talked about gift requests from Santa). So of course my mom gave a suggestion (ummm....thanks mom....we weren't planning on getting her a doll stroller). So now I'm just hoping that she doesn't remember this or I'll just have to explain how the wooden horse barn Santa is bringing her is so much better!:) Lily's visit with Santa was going so well that Santa asked if we wanted a picture with both of them. Clearly Santa was feeling brave or just really had no idea of my son's growing stranger anxiety. So, we went for it- and amazingly Eli was fine. Now (as you can tell) he didn't look thrilled, but he seemed just perfectly fine (not screaming and reaching for me as I had expected). Apparently THIS Santa does have some sort of magical powers!:) Once again the only sad part was that I didn't have my camera along to capture it all (thanks to mom for the pictures). Why is it that my children only happily pose for pictures when I don't have my camera?!

P.S. This actually wasn't a fluke. We bundled up the kids last night and went down to our town's little tree lighting. The tree lighting was actually quite sad (we have more lights on our tree at home),but the kids caroling was fun and watching Santa arrive on the fire truck was great. As soon as Santa arrived Lily started following him around quietly trying to get his attention! He was pretty busy so we had to wait until after the songs, but then Lily was once again quite excited (and not scared at all) to meet Santa!