It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas

We headed over to Lowe's today to get some Christmas lights for the house...decided that this year we actually were going to put them on the house and wanted to go for the old school look -- you know the big colored lights? Figured that since Ava now really gets Christmas, that she would love the lights so we are trying to go all out.

Here is Ava at Lowe's playing with all the Christmas toys...she pulled them all off of the shelf and then proceeded to turn them all on. Over and over again. Quite funny. We did this for a good 15 minutes while Darren found everything we needed to light up the house.
We then headed over to see Santa at the Galleria. Ava did not want to sit on his lap (guess that is good since he is a stranger, right?) but she did at least get close to him and talk to him. Told him about having candy in her pocket (not sure what that was about seeing as she had no candy on her) and also asked him about his reindeer. And told him we were meeting Me-Mommy there. Quite talkative as usual. A lot of progress from last year when she would not get within 1o feet of Santa.

Btw, this was a good Santa...real beard, right age, very nice. Hate the overly fake beards...I have to imagine that the kids know something is wrong there.

Here's the house after it was all lit up...thankfully Ava a took a 3 hour nap today (that is a rarity these days as she sometimes does not nap at all) and I was able to help Darren put the clips on the lights.

And then of course, I accidentally moved the camera when I took this one, but loved the result...looks like crazy fireworks or something.