It's Christmas time pretty baby!

Because I couldn't find a portrait studio with a Santa, we braved the mall for Caroline's first Santa photo.  We braved the mall... on a Saturday... in December.  Obviously, I've lost my mind.  And the windchill was only like 15 yesterday, so PERFECT weather for taking a baby to the mall.

We got dressed in our pretty red Christmas dress, tights and new red shoes.  We put on our largest bib to protect the pretty red dress.  We put on our new red coat and our red and white reindeer hat.  And after all my Santa recon work, we headed for the mall in Edmond.  Yes, it's farther than the one in OKC, but I liked the picture package options much better.  And both Santa's were equally "Santa-y", so I went with the better price option.

We were going to be in Edmond later that evening anyway, so it's not like I drove out of my way just to save a few dollars.

I've never been to the mall in Edmond, but knew that Santa was at the Macy's entrance.  So we parked at Macy's.  Walk through the store to the mall, only to find we are on the second level.  Backtracked into Macy's to find the elevator and then ventured back towards the mall.  The line didn't look very long at all.

We get up to the entrance and sign-in like at a restaurant.  They handed me a pager and tell me I can shop wherever I like in the mall and it will vibrate when it's my turn TO GET IN LINE!  So our first stop is to find a chair so we can take off the 35 layers of clothes Caroline is wearing because it's H.O.T. in the mall.

I pulled her out of her stroller and she is wide-eyed with all the mall excitement and decorations and people.  She's smiling so large she can't keep her pacifier in her mouth.  Lots of people stop us to tell us how pretty she is.  She giggles and grins for each person.

Luckily, we didn't make it very far before our pager goes off and we head back to get in line.  It moves quickly and the back of the display is decorated with all the characters from "Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer" and they had the movie playing on various tv sets.  It was cute and well done.  There was a family of 4 boys behind us and Caroline kept smiling and giggling and making sweet eyes at them.

Our turn came and I was a little nervous about how she would do with this strange man with the large beard.  He had a real gentle voice and was a great Santa.  She looked at him and was staring around in awe at everything.  I moved by the photographer and she squeeked a toy and the ham came out.  She turned to the camera and gave us a series of 3 great grins.

I choose the photo and we were done.  And after reading all of that, you are now rewarded with Caroline's first Santa photo!  We'll have prints for everyone when we get to Louisiana.