Connor met Santa in North Pole!

We decided to hie ourselves down to Christmas in Ice at Santa Claus' house in North Pole. It was a beautiful day and pretty warm (somewhere around 0 F) so we bundled up the boys to play in the ice and snow. Since the ice park is part of Santa Claus' compound, we decided to see if Santa was taking a break from making toys long enough to hear Connor's wish list for Christmas this year. He was out when we arrived at 2 pm, so we promised Connor we would come back after visiting the reindeer and playing at the ice park.

Dasher and Blitzen were out in the paddock for Connor to visit.


People carve this big smooth ice bowls...children can sit in them and dads can spin them around like chilly tops.


There were five ice slides of varying heights, but this was the screaming Castle of Doom slide. It was probably 75 feet long total, and had quite the steep incline. The first few slides, Connor had his eyes closed tight, but by the last few he was laughing in utter glee. He'd get down to the bottom and stumble around laughing, saying "WHOA!!!" I tried to take a picture of them coming down but my shutter speed is not fast enough for the whirling speed!



Santa came out of the reindeer barn just as Connor was coming back to the house to visit him. We thought Connor's eyes were going to pop out his head as Santa called out, "Ho, ho, ho!" He hopped right up on Santa's lap but was too shy to say what he wanted for Christmas, despite Santa offering a candy cane to loosen his lips. Mrs Claus oohed and ahhed over Timmy and promised him something special for Christmas too. Connor didn't want to leave, but Santa promised he would make it Christmas Eve to give Connor special toys, so we said thank you and waved bye bye!


We left just after 3 pm...which is well after sunset here this time of year. But I caught a beautiful moonrise from Santa Claus' front step. You can see why he lives here...it's awfully pretty!