A Visit to See Santa with "Santa" ;)

When I asked my Mom if she wanted to go see Santa with us, she suggested a trip to Build-a-Bear too. She had $20 in gift cards. It turns out that, the hats I mentioned in the previous post, each had a $5 off coupon.....so we headed to Build-a-Bear for some fun. :)
Samantha "picked out" Frosty the Snowman and Marc picked out Alvin the Chipmunk.

Samantha liked watching the fluff spinning around in the bin. She stepped on the pedal to help stuff Frosty, but as soon as the air started, she freaked out a clutched onto me....so Marc finished helping to stuff Frosty.
After they add the fluff, the worker asks us to make sure the animal is "huggable" enough before they close him up. They both to to test Frosty's "huggableness".

After we got home, I had the kids pose with their new friends to show them off.
Thank you Grandma for our new friends. Thank you Mom for coming along with us. We had a great time. :)

A Visit to see Santa

As I stated in the previous posted, My Mom and I took the kids to see Santa on Monday morning. In the waiting queue, there are Rudolph decorations. There are also so decorated Christmas trees that made for a nice photo op.

When the kids' turn, Marc walked right up to Santa and my Mom put Samantha on Santa's other knee. I thought she was going to scream......but she didn't. She also didn't smile either. She was very unsure what to think of this weird looking guy. ;)
Marc told Santa that he wanted Mentos for Christmas. Think Santa can manage that request? ;)
Each child got a small coloring book and an elf hat from Santa after getting their pictures taken.
All in all, I think it was a successful trip to see Santa. :)

Time in the Play Area

I took the kids to the mall to see Santa on Monday, and my Mom met us there to spend more time with her "favorite grandkids". ;) The mall opened at 9:00 and Santa started at 10:00. The mall has a tree house play area that Marc always wants to play in and is always too crowded with unsupervised children, so we don't stop and play. We decided to get there at 9:00 and let the kids play in the play area for awhile to get some wiggles out before waiting in line to see Santa.

This was Samantha's first time in the play area so I was very pleased to see that there were only another 6-8 kids and 90% of them were her age(ish). She had a BLAST!! She LOVED the slide. I was a little hesitant to let her go down without me holding her arm at first (the slides are really fast!). Here are some of the picture we took of the kids playing.

Samantha climbing the stairs to the tree house

Samantha at the top of the tree house

Samantha ready to go down the slide. (I didn't get any of her going down on her own since the slides were so fast)

Marc posing on a mushroom

We caged Samantha in a net ;) (It was actually a net wall along the stairs)

Marc and Samantha going down the slide together. Samantha thought it was so cool

Samantha crawling through a log

Marc was inventing different ways to go down the slide. This time was criss cross applesauce

Samantha and I "had" to race Marc down the slide

Samantha thought the feel of the "rubber" tree was really cool

They played for about 45 minutes and then we went upstairs to wait for Santa. (See next post)

Christmas fm Service

Our church has an fm service 6-8 times a year. fm stands for Family Matters. The older youth and a few adults do a skit/play based on the virtue of the month. The virtue this month is Compassion. After the skit, the sermon, and singing of some Christmas carols, all of the " 'J' Seekers" got to go on stage to sing. ( 'J' Seekers is the name for the Sunday school classes. J=Jesus Seekers). Marc wasn't real thrilled about going up on stage, which totally stumps us! Oh, well, he went up, sang, and was cute.