mr. kringle's

since drum lessons have now been moved to wednesdays, alex and i are starting to go to the pool on friday nights. she is slowly getting better and more acquainted to the pool - she is still her own worst enemy because i know she could swim if she was just brave enough, but she psychs herself out. she will get there. on saturday, we went to mr. kringle's in tower city. this is our first visit there - we never even knew it existed. on our way in we saw the toy soldier being wheeled out to his post. at kringle's the whole place was decorated, which was really nice. you moved thru a few stations playing with crafts and squishy stuff. one station alex mixed up something with some water and created "snow" that was actually cold - that was pretty cool. and then we saw santa himself. he was a good looking santa and alex and him had matching shirts, haha. she told him the doll she wanted and they chatted a bit (i couldn't really hear what they're chatter was about, but alex looked thrilled.) then we went outside to see the window displays at the old higbees - aka, horshoe casino. i thought they were recreating the window display from christmas story, but it must have been the original higbees window displays. i am a fan of animatronic window displays, so they were still cool, and i think alex enjoyed them (especially the one where the guy was fishing and he caught a boot!) on sunday, alex had a play date over at her friend abbey's house. they played out in the snow, and did crafts, and alex spilled hot cocoa on herself (well, she took a sip while it was hot and spit it out on herself to be exact.) while she was playing, john and i went to the movies to see Catching Fire!