Aubrey vs. Santa

We woke up bright & early Saturday morning to take Aubrey to go meet Santa. Our local mall has an awesome children's program, where they do monthly activities and can have a meet & greet with Santa around Christmas and the Easter Bunny in April. We get to the mall around 8 and there was an assembly line of staff signing people in, assigning numbers to meet Santa (we were number 11!), passing out small bean bag animals with Santa hats, small stockings, snowman markers, muffins, and bottled water. They also had little stations to make reindeer food, Hello Kitty facepainting, letters to Santa, coloring pages, and Bertucci's was also there handing out dough to play with, coloring sheets with crayons, coupons & magnets. There were a couple places open in the food court, so Keith & I grabbed some breakfast and let Aubrey color while waiting for Santa to get there. We found out that Aubrey LOVES orange juice, so I'll definitely be buying some next time I go shopping.

Santa got there fairly early, so we weren't waiting long. Aubrey wanted NOTHING to do with him. Even after I sat down next to him and gave him a hug, showing her that "we love Santa!", she was still in hysterics. Keith snapped 3 pictures (even after I told him to just keep taking them.. oh, men), we told him what she wanted for Christmas, and went back to our table to finish breakfast. Someone from Build-a-bear came out in a big teddy bear suit and of course, Aubrey was fascinated by it. She kept going over and touching his leg and when I picked her up, she kept trying to take his hat off. I wish she would have been like that with Santa! Ah well. At least we didn't have to pay for it.










The dreaded Santa pic! Oh noes!


And here are some from the makeshift tunnel we made to crawl under :)






She enjoyed crawling under it a LOT, so I'm thinking of adding one of those play tunnels to her Christmas list. I started a Wishlist on toysrus.com but I still need to tweak it a bit and add a few more things. I recently learned that Toys R Us will be starting their Black Friday sale the night of Thanksgiving so that's probably what I'll be doing, since I have to work early Friday morning.

Are you going out for Black Friday? What are you going to be on the hunt for?