Santaland | "A Stitch in Time"

WARNING TONS OF IMAGES!!

Let’s skip forward in time to today – our very special and relatively new tradition, going to the downtown Minneapolis Macy’s and seeing Santa. We had to alter this new tradition from last year and go without Baba who is on contract work until he leaves for his next big adventure – Roatan… but we managed.

Ready for Santa and the debut of the matching Christmas dresses!

We shot for around noon to miss the rush of potential school trips and the evening or weekend visitors. There was no line up to get in and a minimal line up at the actual wait for Santa.

Santaland entrance

There was lots to see… elves and singing trees… penguins and squirrels. Echo was crazy excited about it all and the kids (even though this is the same display as the year previous) still had eyes wide open spying things they had missed last year. The twins taking great joy in reading the signs and messages themselves.

I love the candlelight setting on my camera

Santa was AMAZING… his outfit was spectacular, his white gloves pristine. The kids all climbed up… well except Echo who was TOTALLY unsure about the whole thing. The pictures were varied and the expressions wild…

But we picked the one that was the most… well… them…

The official copy

After they chatted and covered all the main Santa related topics: behaviour, wishes, whether or not school was going well (they instantly answered YES!). It was time for buttons.

Once Echo got her buttons she was totally ready for Santa… she gave him a huge hug when he asked. It was ADORABLE. I am so glad I managed to snap a quick picture of that!

Echo and her after hug

After Santa we went over to the giftshop and wrote short letters for Santa.

I actually think is this is my favourite that Ken took of me

That left family photos…

I love the really candid ones

And a chance to snap pictures of some off the old fashioned Christmas card styled wall hangings on the way out.

We also took the ESCALATOR on the way down to the elevator to get us to our parking lot level. Trinity was able to get off solo but needed help getting on. The big surprise was Miss Echo being willing to STAND and ride on a couple escalators (there were like 4 or so).

After such a busy visit with Santa we went over to Calver’s for a delicious and absolutely filling lunch! Amazingly enough we came out with FIVE clean kids!! I am not sure how that happened. Nana took us on an amazing Christmas themed adventure. I am so glad I was able to get pictures through it all!!!