Christmas Time is Near

Earlier this month, in much the same manner as last year, we took LG to G-Boys Garden & Christmas center to visit Santa. Every year, the good people of G-Boys build an animatronic Christmas village-y thing. It's fun, in a slapdash, trademark-infringing kind of way. What am I talking about?

Behold!

 Yes. One significant scene in this Christmas village is a recreation of a McDonald's drive-thru staffed by a mouse. No. I have no idea why.

 And then, of course, we have non-licensed Winnie the Pooh and Rabbit.

Finally, we have Batman. Or rather, a mannequin in a Batman halloween costume circa 1995. What does any of this have to do with Christmas? Well, we go see it in December. I guess that's close enough.

At the end of all these shenanigans, you get to meet and have your picture taken with Santa Claus.

Things that worked in our favor this year:

1. LG is way cuter this year than last year. If you recall, she was kind of a lump.
2. Cute outfit. We had a tough time finding an outfit we liked this year, but in the end, I'm proud of it.
3. This year's Santa was a Real Bearded Santa.

Things working against us.

1. LG has been very hesitant about meeting strangers of late. And the bearded fellow with the bright red suit? Very strange.
2. The photographer was dead set on getting a picture of LG's happy face, and WOULD NOT start snapping until we got her smiling. It lent itself to more hysterics, rather than less. Eventually we got him to take a picture while she wasn't wailing. The picture below is the result of that compromise.
3. Four hours later, we realized LG had a fever, so the earlier fussiness could also be blamed on that.

Without further ado, here's the Santa picture we managed to get.

 

Sure, it's the whole family, which was not our original intention, but I like it.

Makes me laugh every time I see her little face.