It's That Time of Year!

In so many ways its hard to believe its that time of year again. Time has just flown by. But I think the biggest thing was that the city had rich green grass right up until mid November. So no one was really in the holiday mood. Then suddenly in the last week we've had well over a foot of the fluffy stuff and now Christmas is in full swing in this household.

It started with seeing Santa at the end of November. The local mall had put on "Time with Santa" for the first time where children with disabilities could book a 15 minute session with Santa. It was great. We didn't have to contend with line ups, we got to pick a nice early time when we knew the kids would be at their prime for pictures, but most importantly Santa and his elves were all prepared with patience understanding and compassion. It was lovely. Santa was absolutely wonderful.

I had been telling Francis as well as showing her pictures of Santa for the week previous as a lead up to our time with Santa. I never do this with anything else but for some reason thought it be a great idea for this situation. Wrong! Poor little lady, as soon as I told her we were leaving so they could go sit on Santa's knee she burst into tears. I had to put her in the car without a jacket on as she was so distraught. Then I spent the next five minutes reassuring her that she wouldn't need to go near Santa and just Dad and Alistair would get pictures with him. Well fortunately we did have this "Time with Santa" As we were able to start by waving at Santa from 60 feet away and to my surprise in a very short period of time she was up giving him high fives, knuckle bumps, as well as telling him she'd like a ball for Christmas. It was so sweet. Both kids each grasped onto Santa's fingers as we sat together as a family pictures. I think Francis started a tradition though. I say this as I think we got such a great family photo out of it, which we have very few of, that why not make every year a family photo session with Santa!