Lyla Meets Santa

On Saturday, we bundled up in the frigid weather and headed over to the Winter Garden to introduce Lyla to Santa Claus. It was sooo cold, but Santa was only visiting for the day and I needed to get a picture :) We arrived just as Santa was leaving for a lunch break, so we took a lunch break too and went to P.J. Clarke's. Lyla and I split a burger and Lyla was in awe of all the other kids at the restaurant (whose parents apparently also arrived just as Santa Claus was leaving). After lunch, we headed back to Santa's village and saw a line already snaking around the room. The sign said "wait time -- estimate one hour." Mark was less then thrilled, so I got on line and Mark and Lyla went off to play. They hung out on the steps of the Winter Garden and listened to the carolers sing. The Winter Garden is decorated beautifully for the holidays. Once we got to the front of the line, we were told that the one hour wait was just to register for a chance to meet Santa. Once you registered, you were given a buzzer and when the buzzer went off, you were allowed to get on another line to wait for Santa. So, we had about another hour to kill. We did a little shopping, a little playing and tried to take some pictures of Lyla. Mom, when is this darn buzzer gonna go off?? (oh yeah, did I mention that I dragged her out when she was sick? Notice all the snot on her face?) We tried to get a picture of her by one of the Christmas trees, but every time I put her down, she crawled away faster than I could snap the picture. So we have a lot of pictures of her behind :) Sorry mom, I have too many places to go. I eventually gave up on the picture attempts and just let her crawl around the Winter Garden. She was in heaven! She loved the wide open space and just crawled and crawled and crawled (and was absolutely filthy when I picked her up) And then...the moment we were all waiting for...we buzzed! I didn't know how she would react to Santa -- laugh, cry, generally freak out. But, in typical Lyla fashion, she was simply curious. What is going on here? Who is this guy with all this hair? Does he have a chin under that beard? Why is his hair so white? Will I ever have this much hair? Will I ever have any hair? Maybe this is my Uncle Mel? So many unanswered questions for my little girl...Alas, we could not get her to look at the camera, but got some cute pics of Lyla and Santa checking each other out.