Christmas/Santa Pics

On the day that my mom and I took the girls to see Santa at the mall (the Saturday before Thanksgiving), we plopped them down outside on a blanket to try to get a couple pics. Amazingly, Sydney sat next to her sister and for the most part, smiled. And Annabelle stayed put and did not try to crawl away. But in true Annabelle fashion, I don't think we got one smile out of her.

This year, I have a hodge-podge of xmas cards, based on shutterfly codes for 15 free here, 15 free there, 10 more free back in Oct.... so some of the cards I made, just have a general pic of the girls (the 10 I made in Oct), some have a pic in their xmas dresses (the 30 free) and we are supposed to be getting 25 more from a contest I won from a photographer who took a family pic (way back on 11/13 and I have yet to get the cards a month later).

For my friends and family who get xmas dress pics, this is the pic I thought came out the best and is our xmas card pic. I sorta giggle that Annabelle is fiddling with a leaf.
This picture was 1st runner up:

For the record... we took these pics in the evening in shade, so the pics came out very cool. The 2 above I had warmed up some. Some of the "outtakes" below, I did nothing too - so they are just cooler/dimmer.

The Outtakes.

Waiting in line at the mall (well, no line we were first, walked up right as they were putting out the sign that Santa would be back in 15 minutes), Sydney watches the carousel of reindeer.

After pics with Santa, each child gets a voucher for a free Carousel ride.

After such a busy evening, Nana bought Sydney a super awesome Tinkerbell balloon that lights up on the inside with a blinky light that changes color. For the record: 4 weeks later and that balloon is still going strong (no longer floats up high, but still full and the light still turns on - she's still playing with it almost daily).

The SANTA pics:

the version the mall gave us:

my cropped and "make it less bright" version: