Family Holiday Extravaganza

We missed seeing our usual Santa this year because it coincided with Charlotte's baptism. Luckily, the kids' school had a free Santa breakfast this year so we stopped by for some crafts, food, and Santa pictures. We knew Wyatt would be hesitant about meeting him, but for some reason Noah was reluctant as well even though he had been okay the past two years. Charlotte was cool with the big guy so she got a solo picture with him. Eventually we got Noah to go over and finally Wyatt, but only if I held him. Noah was too shy to tell Santa what he wanted so I quickly let him know that he wanted a Treasure Truck for Christmas this year. Wyatt wasn't clear on the Christmas wishlist idea yet (although at various times when we asked him he would say "duck" or "firetruck" or some other random thing) so we let Santa use his imagination with his gift this year.

 

 

After the breakfast we decided to make it a really Christmasy day, so we took the kids up to Long Grove to walk around the downtown. It was super warm again (note the no jackets) so walking around outside seemed like the right thing to do. Long Grove was a lot smaller than we remembered (hit hard by the recession) but they still had some cute decorations and songs playing and we ran into Santa and Mrs. Claus again.

Christmas in Long Grove: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHbtDxHr58c&feature=youtu.be

Next we stopped in Bolingbrook to walk around the Promenade. Last year they had a great big tree that lit up in time to music. We found the big tree, but it had no music this year.

 

 

After doing a little shopping, we headed over to Bass Pro Shops to visit their Winter Wonderland where we saw Santa for the third time that day (it's like he was following us). Since we had already seen him twice we did not have to stand in the huge line, but we did enjoy a free ride on their Christmas Carousal. Wyatt finally decided he was okay with riding a carousal (and even happily picked out his moose) until he looked behind him half-way through and noticed that a polar bear was "chasing" us.

 

 

 

Our final stop for Christmas Extravaganza was to get some delicious ice cream at Oberweis.