Hasta la vista, Santa

We predicted well in advance of our visit to Santa that Nora would be less than thrilled about the whole thing. Still, we decided that for the sake of tradition, we would trek to the mall to give it a whirl.

We set out to arrive at the mall right at 10:00, when Santa begins seeing little ones on the weekends. Imagine our surprise when we got there to find an enormous line had already formed. I guess everyone had the same strategy as we did--ugh. But we were there, Nora was dressed up, we figured it wasn't going to get any better between now and Christmas, and Nora was being pretty patient, so we stuck it out.

Thirty minutes later, it was our turn, and... it was over in the blink of an eye.

Nora was not impressed. In fact, she tried to dive right off of the big man's lap. This would be her reaction to being sat in the lap of any stranger (or anyone who is not Mommy or Daddy, really), so it actually went exactly as we had anticipated. We definitely weren't going to try to force the poor kid to sit there, so we did the only thing we could do--especially after waiting half an hour in line.

Michael posed in the picture with her. HAHAHAHA. (Notice she still looks miserable.)

Thankfully, Santa said that Nora was still on his nice list, so at least she won't get coal in her stocking. And we have our fingers crossed that things will go a little more smoothly next year. Stranger danger, be gone!

(Check out our girl meeting Santa for the first time last year. It was decidedly less dramatic.)

Did you like going to see Santa as a kid? I'll admit that I completely understand the aversion to him--he is a little scary, if you think about it from a kid's point of view. If you have children, have you taken them to see Santa Claus? How have they reacted?