Avery's First visit with Santa!

It's been a fun first Christmas season with Avery. We've had a great time sharing all of our traditions with her from putting the lights on the house to putting up a tree and decorating the house. I always thought it would be fun to find our first Christmas tree as a family and a friend recently told me about a tree farm up in Petaluma. Last weekend Guy and I headed up there with Avery, stopping for lunch at our friend Chris cheney's restaurant along the way. It was a great, cold wintery day and we all bundled up for our outing. I had been told that this Christmas tree farm "Little Hills" was great because there's a Christmas shop, you can visit with Santa, see farm animals and cut down your own tree- how fun! I had high hopes to get a great family Christmas picture so we dressed Avery in a red, velvet outfit and took the camera. We did have a great time at Little Hills Tree Farm, but we underestimated how long Avery could stay excited about this outing. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't get our normally-very-smiley darling daughter to smile for a family shot. We started with her first visit to Santa. Mommy was definitely more excited about this than Avery. I put her on not-very-jolly Santa's lap and she took a long look at this strange looking man and then proceeded to stick her hand straight into his fake beard. Her hand got tangled up so I crawled on the stage and tried to get her hand out while trying to get the best picture of her I could. Check out her reaction to Santa here. We did love Little Hills- the property is gorgeous and it's fun to saw down your own tree. after numerous attempts to get nice strangers to take our picture and help make Avery laugh we headed for the animal farm and the rest of the property. It was definitely a fun afternoon and we'll be going back next year, but we'll time it right and hopefully get a great family photo.