Santa santa santa

We attended a second Santa Claus parade this past weekend.  Alas, it was a rainy, rainy evening. Only a fraction of the scheduled floats made an appearance and a few townsfolk.  But Abi and her friend had fun. We parents enjoyed it too, but not nearly as much as the kids who didn't seem phased by the downpour of rain.  A benefit of the shortened parade is that we didn't have to be out for too long.
Luckily, Robin had also prepared a couple thermoses of hot chocolate and a fresh mini batch of cookies.
We've taken to baking mini batches of cookies lately in the toaster oven.  It's great - fresh cookies whenever we want.  It started with some store-bought dough, on a whim.  Now we make our own cookie dough.  AH, the joys of having a toaster oven again.  We hadn't planned on getting a new one (the old one died not long after moving to this house), but there was a great sale and our region recently switched to time of use rates for power.  In the Winter, that means peak costs are during the dinner-making hours and breakfast. (7-1100h and 1700-1900h.)  A toaster oven saves a lot of energy!  It's great for the basics like toast, or baking up some perogies, a small batch of fresh-from-the-oven cookies, little quiches...

Oh, but I was typing about Santa.
So today Abi and I ventured out to the mall at the far end of town.  She was excited to see Santa.  She dressed herself up in a nice dress.  We trimmed her bangs.  We popped into Zellers on the way to see Santa so she could have nice white tights (rather than the argyle pattern - since all of her current hand-me-down tights have bright designs) for the photo.  She spotted Santa as we made our way to the ladies room to change and she was eager to see him.  She loved the fairy garden surrounding Santa.
And then I was entering our information so Santa's elves could email our (thankfully) free photo to us and she decides she doesn't want her picture taken with Santa.  I sat with her (unprepared for a photo myself!), but still she refused to even look up or smile.  The kind elves did their best.  And luckily there was no lineup before or after us at that hour.
This was the best of the bunch.

Happy Holidays.