sitting with santa

after a total failure of getting a family picture at home this morning, we decided to skip the picture until tomorrow. madelyn was having a total crying meltdown. instead we were going to head to the mall for christmas shopping and pictures with santa. i didn't have high hopes for a very good picture with santa, but still wanted to give it a try. madelyn slept a little on the way to the mall, so i thought that improved our odds a little.


the line was a little long, but they had animated windows and christmas movies playing throughout the line and it didn't seem all that long of a wait. at least madelyn didn't seem to mind waiting. while in line madelyn noticed santa's thomas the train shirt ("choo-choo") and we talked about sitting with him and showing her teeth when she smiled. the second it was our turn madelyn took one look at santa and backed up four steps! he was a really good santa too, real hair and beard. i have never seen madelyn hold so still for so long. it was like she was in shock. zero expression, zero movement, she was just staring straight ahead. i overheard someone in line say that she looked like she was going to cry. at least she didn't cry and she did look at the camera. it could have been worse. the picture here is the one i took after they finished with the official pictures so it isn't as 'good' as the one they took for us.

after a few exhausting hours of shopping, we went home to rest before going out again. but once madelyn woke up, matt and i didn't have it in us to go out again - just more errands for tomorrow. we did decide to go visit a local light display though since madelyn was in a much better mood than she was in the morning. it is a rather large display that you drive through and then there is a few displays at the end for you to get out of our car to view indoors.

the light display is really nice and madelyn asked "what's this?" a lot. some of them were difficult to figure out, but we could usually figure something out to tell madelyn. in addition to the light displays, there are several animated window displays. here is a picture of the reindeer inside of a barn. she didn't give as many "wow"s as she does when we are just driving around neighborhoods, but she asked a lot of questions about what was all around her. the funniest part was that on the way there she kept pointing out when there was "car".

and of course, what holiday light display would be complete without dinosaurs? i mean what is christmas without a velociraptor and an erupting volcano? they actually had a lot of dinosaurs. madelyn made some growling noises when she saw the velociraptors. how is it that she knew that they were the dinosaurs that might growl? i guess they did have teeth showing. at least you can tell that there was a lot of variety to our drive through the lights.


once we parked and headed inside madelyn got to see the largest train table she had ever seen! and she has been really into trains lately. that was one of the first toys she showed me when i went to pick her up at jason's house. we had also stopped by barnes and noble at the mall today for her to play at the train table for a while so she was already riding a train high. madelyn is the little pink hat in the picture. it was pretty crowded inside, but madelyn would just work her way up to the gate to get a better look. she really liked that there were all different trains going in different directs one higher up than the last. there was also a little train workshop (the red part of the picture) with little elves working on trains.

our last stop before heading back to the car was to see the beautiful nativity display. the nativity figures have been bought one at a time by a local family and imported from italy (i think they are made at the vatican or blessed there - i didn't read the sign this year). they are almost life sized and really beautiful. madelyn really liked it because our nativity set at home is one of her favorite things. we have it set up on our dining room table and madelyn will go over there and call for me to come and sit down so that she can sit on my lap while i tell her about all the figures. her favorite pieces are the lamb, ox, and baby jesus.

by the time we left, madelyn was done and ready for bed. although she perked right up after getting home and had some silly fun in the kitchen with daddy before bedtime. love.