Santa

Layla has been seeing Santa lately on some of the shows she watches (like Dora and such) so when I mentioned to her that she could go meet him she was very excited.  I think it's fine for her to like Santa.  We teach her that Jesus' birthday is the reason for Christmas, but I don't see the harm in having her like Santa--kind of like how she likes Mickey or Dora.  Anyway, so a couple of weekends ago we decided to go to Westshore Mall (figuring Santa wouldn't be very busy there:D) to see Santa.  We first went to Applebees for dinner (we are slightly stuck in a rut and often lately end up there).  We were told the wait was 20 minutes and ended up waiting over an hour!  Cramming the five of us for that long in their crowded waiting room was annoying, and then our food took a long time too.  Thank goodness for games on our phones for the kids to play (well, mainly for Gibs, he gets bored, Layla does well waiting thankfully)!  We then got to Santa's area at the mall at like 8:05 and he had left at 8!  Layla was disappointed, but thankfully only for a few minutes.  So we decided to try again last Friday.  We pulled into the mall parking lot and I told Layla that we thought that Santa was probably there, but we weren't positive (wanted to warn her just in case for some reason he wasn't there again).  She then looked around the parking lots and was like, "Hmm, I don't see his sled or his deer anywhere.  I wonder if he's here."  Gotta love the mind of a 3 year old:).

In order to get Greta on the pic too, we thought we'd just get the whole fam on.  Layla had been smiling, just apparently not on this pic.  Gibs did NOT like Santa and cried the whole time and then when Joe put him down he ran as fast as he could to his stroller, threw my diaper bag on the ground (which I had placed on his seat when I got my camera out) and jumped into his stroller faster than I've ever seen him get in before!  Normally he's not scared of things so it was funny that he hated Santa so much!

 Santa asked Layla what she wanted for Christmas and she just said she didn't know.  Then when we walked away I asked her what she wanted (and wondered why she couldn't remember when Santa asked her) and she said that she wanted toys and new little socks...for Greta:).  She must think they're cute:).