Sitting on Santa's Lap

Both of my girls were VERY excited to go and see Santa this year. Ellie especially, which I'm not sure is completely normal for an 18 month old :-). While waiting in line to see the jolly man himself, Ellie just jumped up and down, for a minute or two, while loudly exclaiming, "Oooh! Ooooh! Ooooh!" OK, it's really amusing, but everytime Ellie sees Santa (even just a picture), she points and excitedly makes her own version of the 'ho ho ho' sounds, except that coming from Ellie it's like a monkey or gorilla noise. She also says 'Santa' fairly clearly when she sees him. She's a huge fan.

This is Ellie repeating Santa's 'ho ho ho', with her monkey-like 'oooh oooh oooh's. She even kinda looks like a monkey when she says it. :-)

Annie enjoyed a little one on one time with Santa, telling him about the dollhouse she wants. (She took me by surprise that morning though when she'd told me she wasn't going to be asking Santa for a dollhouse anymore, because now she wanted makeup. Three years old!?)

Afterwards, the girls were so giddy and excited by the whole experience, that they just danced in the mall aisle way for the next 5 minutes or so.

Afterwards we stopped by to visit Grandma Ruth . . . who has Ellie's favorite rocking horse in the entire world. She rides it like a little daredevil, and I'm always convinced she's gonna tip the thing completely backwards as she tosses her body forcefully from front to back. She loves it.

This was just a short video from before we left to go see Santa, when Annie and Ellie were excitedly talking about our plans for the day.

Oh, and here's the link to last year's Christmas picture. They're getting so big!