Seeing Santa

Ever since we first started getting ready for Christmas this year, Ellie has made it abundantly clear that she does NOT want Santa to come to our house, and she does NOT want Santa to bring her presents. I'm not sure where this fear of Santa comes from, but it might be related to her former fear of beards. Or maybe she just thinks it's creepy that a stranger sneaks into your house in the middle of the night, and everyone is just okay with that. I get her point.

As usual, we planned to go visit "Knob Hill Santa" this year (he actually has a page on Yelp!). The whole day Ellie kept telling me, "I do NOT want to sit on his lap!" I reassured her that she did not have to, that I would hold her. I did finally get her to agree to talk to him as long as she didn't have to sit on his lap.

One of the reasons we love going to see Santa every year is to see the impressive, crazy amount of lights. We could never get a picture that would do it justice, but it is epic!

Ellie did fine as long as she was being held by either Andy or me.

She was a little nervous about going up to Santa, but she let me get fairly close.

Then when it was her turn, she just started shouting out her pre-rehearsed list at Santa: "a Dora backpack and Hello Kitty makeup (she copied that from Hannah's list).

Santa couldn't hear her, so he convinced her to stand closer to him. She actually did fine with that until he said he wanted to tell her a secret in her ear. That made her freak out a little. Even I thought that was a little creepy, but he just wanted to say something to her about bringing her candy.

It was fun to look back and see all of our years visiting Santa so far:

2009 Our first year. It was actually a different house/Santa than the other years.
2010 We didn't fit in a visit before our trip to Philadelphia for a wedding this year.
2011 This year started our run with the Knob Hill Santa.
2012
2013