santa's in town!

Santa was welcomed to the mall earlier today by Eggnog the Juggling Elf.  Aiden ooed and aahed at the juggling and bounced on daddy's shoulders.  When Santa came out he was pretty happy to see him.  This Santa was the most enthusiastic Santa you can imagine (I was surprised that the drunken Santa from the past few years isn't around anymore ;)  Aiden literally bounced as he waited for his turn.  He finally trotted right up to Santa with a big smile because, "He wants to be on the nice list!"  I may or may not be throwing out that he needs to do certain things he may not be interested in doing by pulling the santa card, so he has heard about the nice list ;)

He told Santa what he'd like which started with the notoriously large, overpriced, and ugly Dora Dollhouse.  Toys-r-us has this special display for this monstrosity and Aiden was sucked in by the seasons and daytime changer kitschy thing (that will eventually be ignored).  Can you tell I'm not excited about this toy idea? - I think now after some gentle "talking about ideas" he'd rather have Santa bring him Tolee's Treehouse.  I can't believe he's already old enough to have very specific preferences... and I'm already feeling guilty when I don't like his preferences....oh well.

We actually had two visits to Santa because our first picture was pretty blurry (see first photo on the right which looks ok teeny tiny, but if you click on it you'll see what I mean)... The retake was actually even more fun!  Aiden and Santa were like old buddies laughing it up in the fun picture.  I can hear the giggles when I look at this shot.  Santa gave him a coloring book, high five, and fist bumps and we were on our way.  It was a fun way to kick off the season.