Santa 2011

We finally made it! I have been seeing friends post pictures of their kids with Santa for the past couple weeks and couldn't wait to take Ryan. Last year we saw Santa at North Park and at Neiman's downtown. The Santa at Neiman's is great and there is no line, but there is something special about the Santa at North Park that I just love!

He's pretty darn popular - which obvious by the always existing line of children waiting to see him. Everyone loves him because he has a reputation for authenticity. The CBS Evening News once called him "one of the country's premier Santas," and years ago The Wall Street Journal labeled him the world's Santa expert. Now he even has a blog! Check it out here. 

Since I wanted to take him back to the Santa at North Park I knew I was going to need some help. Luckily my mom was in town AND Grandma was available too! Yia Yia headed to the mall at 8:30 to get a ticket for us to stand in line. We were #19 - wowzers! And that's standing in line 30 minutes before it even opens! A lot of people get their ticket early and then come back in the afternoon because then you basically just get put right in the front of the line. Since we were working around Ryan's nap time I wanted to go before noon. Santa came out at 11:15 and I think we saw him around 11:45ish.  But between myself, YiaYia and Grandma we had Ryan covered! He played in the toy store, walked around and ate some snacks - not a bad morning if you ask me!

I wondered how Ryan would react this year. I wasn't sure if he would cry - which seems to be the normal reaction for kiddos his age - but I wasn't quite sure what he would do. I was excited to find out. And this is what we got:

As I mentioned before, it was around 11:45 when we finally got to sit on his lap - which is basically nap time. He started tugging on his hair...which made it impossible to keep it nice and neat. He wasn't really scared of Santa but he also wasn't jumping for joy. I think we probably could have gotten a smile out of him if it hadn't been so close to naptime. Oh well! I love my little bug!

It's hard to believe that this was only a year ago...