Santa

Last Christmas Ava wasn't even 5 months old yet so we didn't even attempt to go see Santa. I figured she was just too little then. Needless to say, I've been pretty excited to bring her this year.

Our mall is doing a promotion with one of the big picture sharing sites where for $32 you can get a flash drive of your pictures with Santa as well as a $25 credit to this site. I figured that was perfect becauase rather than pay $18 for 2 small pictures with santa, for the $8 difference we get to bring the drive home & do what we want with them. I figured I could order our Christmas cards from them.

So we planned an evening out with our friends yesterday. We met them at the mall for dinner. We got a late start because Edward couldn't get off to early yesterday, so it was already 6pm by the time we got to dinner. Since Ava usually goes to bed by 6:30pm, we were risking it. But she seemed fine. We had a wonderful dinner. Ava & her little friend Nora were playing & the girls had a blast walking through the mall together to get to Santa. Half way through the long line we could tell that she was tired, but not a crabby tired. She was just being more quiet than normal. She was actually quite an angel throughout the entire process. We had her dressed up in a beautiful Christmas dress that my MIL sent. All was great.

We get to the front of the line, she takes one look at Santa, and...

screams bloody murder.

She did not want anything to do with Santa. Poor guy! I'm sure he gets that a lot, but I really didn't expect it from Ava. She's scared of nothing. We didn't even attempt to take a picture because she wouldn't go near him, let alone sit in his lap. I'm hoping it was because she was tired. We may take one more shot at it during the day sometime, but it won't be in time to get the credit to use for our Christmas cards since I really need to order those today or tomorrow.

At least we tried.