santa, take 1

santa visited great-nannie's nursing home this year . . .

we thought it would be great fun for riley to meet the jolly ole' guy in this non-threatening environment. let me set the scene: we drove through heavy snow for a half hour with riley screaming in the car. note that santa did not arrive until the early evening, which is riley's bedtime (yes, she is usually asleep by 6pm!). and also note that riley has a little cold, which probably doesn't help her mood.

this is the first picture. we should've stopped. it's not terrible, although i wish i'd gotten dressed up. i never considered that i would end up in all of the photos! but because no one was looking at the camera, we thought we'd try to get more pictures . . .

then riley decided that she wanted to get away from this strange guy. here she is hitting my face repeatedly.

in this next pic, i'm able to pull it together enough to smile, but riley disagrees with that plan. great-nannie is ready to bolt, too. she does not like it when riley cries.

next we decide to eliminate the santa altogether and to add in the rest of the family. matt gets paged during this photo shoot.

we considered airbrushing matt back into this picture, but no one is really paying attention at this point.

we did manage one picture with everyone (except santa). we'll take what we can get.

later, riley warmed up a little. this is the closest she got to the man in red.

happy holidays!