I'm the Mommy, Thats Why!: Santa at Riverwoods

For the past few years we have been going to the The Shops at Riverwoods to visit Santa. This guy is the real deal! I personally, can't stand the Santa at University Mall and have boycotted him ever since he refused my kids tokens of love (a $1 bill so he could buy some carrots for his reindeer lovingly presented by a sweet 7 year old boy) several years back and refused to look at our camera when were taking a picture (which at that time was allowed) because "the flash bothers his eyes". Suck it up Santa, it's your job! Sorry, but he's a jerk. This Santa is SOOOOO AWESOME!! He really cared about each kid (which makes the wait a bit longer, but worth it) and listened to them, asked them questions, encouraged them to be kind and good, looked at their letters and genuinely was THE BEST! I love this guy. The kids really liked him too. Ok, not Tyler so much, he says he's done with the Santa thing and was pretty ticked that we made him stand in the picture because he knew I'd blog about it (see blog header). Lauren was a good sport and McKenna and Brooklynn ate it up. So if you live around here, GO TO RIVERWOODS!!!

This was as close as Lauren got to seeing the Nutcracker this year. Every year she goes to the Nutcracker Ballet for a daddy-daughter date (see here and here) but this year we decided to take all the kids, except Brooklynn, to see A Christmas Carol at the Hale Center Theater. I can't believe we lived here for 8 years before we ever made our way to the HCT. If you haven't seen it, it really is a MUST!! We enjoyed it just as much this year as last. The kids all enjoyed it too. Even McKenna didn't mind the scary parts.

After visiting Santa we headed over to Blinkenstaff's Toy Store...think Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. High end toy store with lots of fun things to play with. It's been open for a while now but we haven't managed to make our way there (yes, mom, it's more than 1/2 a mile a way! "wink" "wink") Brooklynn was in heaven. In fact, I couldn't really take any good pictures of her, she was moving too fast.