A Visit With Santa

Rainah and I went over to Novi for a few days and had to make a trip to see the amazing Twelve Oaks Santa.  We met up with Jess, Justin, Jill, Hayden, Talan, and Mom and Dad.  The kids were all great and went willingly right up to Santa, telling him what they wanted.
Rainah told him that she wanted sponges.  Yes, that's right, sponges.  Now, you might be thinking... "Yep, that's Jenn's daughter... NEAT FREAK".  But actually, she loves those little capsules that you put in water and they turn into little sponge shapes.  They are her favorite bath toy.  I'm not sure how Santa reacted to this request, but he didn't seem phased by it.  After the pictures, Santa gave the kids a Polar Express train that you could put your picture in- just a cardboard type frame.  At the end of it was a ticket they could tear off.  Later, when it was bath time, Rainah had to run and find it and wanted to turn it into me to get her sponges.  It took me a few minutes to put it all together, but apparently she thought Santa gave that to her in order to get her sponges.  I had to explain that Santa would not be bringing them until Christmas.  So funny how their brains work sometimes!

Hayden, Talan, and Rainah- the cousins

I have no idea why she is making this face, but she chose today to do it every time we asked her to smile

Driving the Polar Express

Playing in the "snow"- which we can't figure out why they would put right BEFORE the photos with Santa!

Santa talking to Talan and Hayden

Santa reading Hayden's letter

Rainah's turn

Here comes the silly smile

Getting her "ticket"

Christmas Eve

This Christmas Eve started out a bit rocky, as I was vacuuming and realized that the window in our dining room had been leaking and water was all over our hardwood floor and was starting to warp already.  Luckily, our handyman rushed over and tried to help stop it... we've been getting tons of snow and apparently had an ice damn or something like that.  While Rainah was napping, Don was shoveling and I played in the snow!

We spent the evening together, and before we put Rainah down, we made sure to put out cookies for Santa.  I'm not sure how much of all of this she understands, but it is fun to start some traditions with her and I know she's going to have a great time with all the gifts tomorrow!

Now that's a lot of snow!

The tree

When there's food, you can always find Cheyenne nearby!

Rainah tested the cookies to make sure they were ok to leave out for Santa

She LOVED the chocolate peanut butter balls... definitely her mama's girl!

You may see her doing this someday at some sort of food eating contest :)

This is how old she'll be in just a few days

Putting out the cookies

She apparently needed to try one more... she only took one bite, though