The Good and The Bad

No, I am not talking about Santa's lists. I am talking about what we experienced today. Our morning was Fantastic - the good. Our afternoon, not so fantastic - the bad.
I took today off work so that we could go to our Community's Fun with Santa party in the morning. This was a blast. For 11 dollars, we got 5 craft projects, a visit with Santa and a gift bag, a clown with face painting if desired, and a snack. It was a lot of fun and all 3 of us enjoyed it very much. Lyla participated in all of the craft projects with (of course) lots of guidance and assistance. But she tried everything and we accomplished it all. I enjoy doing craft projects with Lyla so this was a lot of fun.

Here is Lyla and I when the man of the hour walked in the room. I saw him from afar and told Lyla. We stopped what we were doing so we could get a good look at the beloved Santa Claus.
Here we are doing the crafts. This is Lyla doing the 'Christmas Crayon Rubbings'. She really liked this one, rolling a crayon over a stencil to produce a picture.

Here we are applying the glue for the 'Snowflake Ornament' that we made that is currently look spectacular on our tree.

The other crafts included Magic Reindeer Food (which Lyla did an excellent job at scooping the oatmeal into the baby food jar), a Santa advent Calender, and a Christmas Necklace (which has been the highlight and she has worn it a lot since she made it. She has even offered Teddy to

'Try' it and her Christmas tree in her room is currently 'trying' it out for her).

Here we are in the line waiting to see Santa Claus. At this point we were next in line and she was super excited to see him. She was waving at him and saying 'Hi San-t-ka' . You can see her necklace in these next photos..
However when it got to be her actual turn she was really shy. She didn't even want to look at him.

Here I am giving her a pep talk to look at Santa. She did turn around and look at him for a brief moment but that was about it.
After seeing Santa, we headed over to make our tasty snack which was a reindeer snack. It was a graham cracker covered with chocolate icing, 2 pretzels placed on top as antlers, and then 2 raisins for eyes and a red skittle as a nose and viola you have Rudolf the red nose reindeer snack. Lyla really enjoyed eating the chocolate icing.

From a distance her shyness for Santa Claus was gone. Here she is waving and saying 'Hi San-tka!"Then came the parents great idea. Lets go to Bronners today rather than next week so Ryan will have an extra day off at Christmas. This is when things go from fantastic to not so fantastic. So historically, I have been able to nurse Lyla and she falls asleep and then I put her in the car and she usually sleeps for like an hour. This has been great for allowing us to go to my parents house a couple of times. Well today, she fell into a deep slumber at nap time and when I moved her into the car she awoke. And since we have turned the seat around, she had lots to look and and therefore, she did not go back to sleep. No sleep - no nap- my poor baby girl :(

I felt terrible about this as she was up early today and she really did need her sleep. But we forged onwards hoping and praying she would fall asleep on our hour ride. But nope, no sleep, no nap.

We got to Bronners to find a parking lot cagammed full of cars. So we parked illegally and headed in. We went straight to the Santa check in to find out that the wait was going to be 3.5 to 4 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!! You read it right - 3.5 to 4 hours!!!!!!!!!! And remember - no nap, no sleep = no way!! I was pretty disappointed as we just drove 1 hour, Lyla lost her nap, and I really wanted her to have her yearly pictures taken with the Bronner's Santa - as he is a really good looking Santa. Oh well!

We walked around the store and looked at the displays and left without purchasing anything. So we went for a drive to basically see some displays in a store for 30 minutes!

Lyla did love the displays - they are fantastic - and here are some pictures of her enjoying them.

We picked up Bravarian Inn Chicken and headed onto the road for our hour trip home. Little Bear in the DVD player, hoping Lyla would fall sleep. But nope, she didn't. And the hour trip took 2 hours. Huge back up on I-75, had to get off and go a different route! What a day! Lyla was in bed asleep by 7:20. And I am heading that way too!