The Annual Santa Visit

Since it's Rexburg-like chilly outside and I had nothing constructive planned for the day, I decided it was time to visit our buddy SC.

Yeah....it's always a good idea. The line was only 40 minutes long to get into "Santa's Ice Palace sponsored by Narnia." And forgive me for sounding chauvinistic, but it was totally planned by a man. No woman would have put 55-inch TV screens at adult eye level and had synthetic snow falling from the ceiling. A cool idea (and a great way to market the next Narnia flick) but the snow sticks to our carefully selected Santa-matching outfits. Seriously! Look at Laynie's hair. Can you say horrific case of dandruff?

Luckily, my kids made it out of the "palace" in better shape than the kids who were trying to ball up the snow and throw it at each other.

Then it got to the smiling part of the portrait. You can all see how well that turned out. The elf-chick (who btw was at least 6'2" tall) took three quick pics and then said, "Well...I think this is the best one." In the other option, Gav and Laynie were both looking at the camera but their mouths were open ala reindeer in the headlights. I asked Gavin which one he liked better, and this was his selection. Awesome.

I hope your visits to Santa are memory-makers!

P.S. Gavin asked for dog toys (I'm totally not kidding) and Laynie asked for a "big baby doll." We stopped by Macy's on our way out and let them put their requests on letters and drop them in the red mailbox. Honestly, it was a pretty fun afternoon.