Visit with Santa!

James' daycare had a Breakfast with Santa today. We invited Grandma Rose and Grandpa Larry to join us but last night's snow made the drive too difficult for so early in the morning. Grandma called and said she'd meet us later in the day with a "surprise".

Our first attempt at sitting on Santa's lap didn't go well. James cried and threw a fit, even with Mrs. Kathy and Ms. Kelsey trying to help. We went to the rest of the party, and James showed us the Christmas decorations in his classroom. This is the fireplace and stockings for all the kids in the class.





To our surprise James wanted to give Santa another try. We waited in line a second time, with James telling us that he wanted to "just stand". I know what he really wanted to do was TELL Santa everything he wanted for Christmas. After the crying fit, one of the things we told him was that Santa probably didn't hear his list when he was crying. So I guess James wanted to make that right. Ms. Kelsey found him a Santa hat to make him brave.




Yay! James did much better. It was pretty loud in the room so I didn't personally hear but he did tell Santa everything he wanted.



"A very lucky shot guy, a goggles guy, a fire station, a fire boat, Batman cave..." Yeah, some of that doesn't make sense.

And then he stood for a picture!

We met Grandma Rose for lunch then. James was so happy to see her, he greeted her with "Grandma Rose!!" It was so cute. Grandma went right into the "surprise". She brought James an Elf on the Shelf! She explained the Elf and how he would watch over James for Santa.

He is taking this very seriously. The Elf has been named "Sneaky" and he sneaks peeks at James all day long. We read the book for bedtime and so now James knows that Sneaky flies to the North Pole each night to report on good/naughty behavior, and then he comes back to our house and finds a new spot to sit for each day. I told James that in the morning we'll have to find Sneaky. (This reminds me to change his position right now!)

Well, after lunch we came home and decided to play in the snow! We had a night of fresh, fluffy snow and it was just begging for a snowman.

Well, snowmen are kind of tough. So we gave it a try and then put it on hold for some sledding. We have a great little hill in our backyard.

What a big difference from last year. Last year James could barely walk through the snow, needing to be carried. This year he just stomped through and even walked up the hill by himself. Believe me, it is no easy feat walking through 6+ inches of snow!

Such a happy (but snotty) boy!

Back to the snowman. And success!

There's even a carrot nose!

We had to get creative for eyes and a mouth- we used sidwalk chalk :)

James was so proud to stand by our snowman!

It's his first snowman.

He had a great idea to add some arms.

And then he insisted on a magician's hat. I found one of his old knit hats from ChaCha. I figured she's magical, it would work.

I turned the camera on myself. Just because.

One last snowman change. James wanted to add hair.

Next up: Igloo!

We couldn't do much but watch Daddy build the igloo so we took a picture.

Daddy carved out the igloo and James crawled in to try it out. I was ready to yank his little self out of there if it caved in. But Jim built a good igloo.

Catching snowflakes on our tongues is fun!

What a great day!