We wanted to do something ‘normal’ for the kids this year for their annual trip to see Santa, and Katie luckily came across a post on Facebook where a photographer was going to be hosting 2 days of photos at a tree farm about 40 minutes away from us. This just happened to be ‘Santa Andy’ – the same Santa the kids have had their photos taken with since they were born (all past years’ photos are linked at the end). These 2 days sold out immediately before we had even heard of them. But Katie got in touch with the photographer and found out that some people had not yet paid for their reserved slotted, and so those times would be going back out to interested people.
I’ll spare you the long story, but needless to say, we got one of those few slots that opened up, and we were happy it was going to be with ‘our Santa’ again. Come the day of the shoot, we didn’t really sense too much anxiety from the kids, but it immediately became apparent that Addison wouldn’t be leaving Chris’ side. She was pretty shy with Santa until I brought up a little joke that we’ve been talking about; her love of ham sandwiches and that maybe she’d like to get a ham sandwich for Christmas (which she would!). So that opened her up a bit to talking to Santa, and Santa thinking, ‘yup, these people are weird.’
So with a little chit-chat under our belt and still wearing our mandatory masks (Grandma Pati made us matching Christmas masks), we started off shooting our photo with the masks on and then took them off the remainder of the shots. Addison was pressed right into Chris for every second she could, and we almost didn’t get a picture of just the kids because she kept wanting to run over to us. But I guess that’s happened the last few years – there just wasn’t any warm-up time given the 5-minute slots that were booked. Regardless, this is the year that we roll with the ‘whatever happens, happens,’ so we’re just happy to have these shots. Less than a week after this was shot, pretty much all other Santa photos were shut down with higher restrictions, so we’re just happy that any of it happened at all.
Special thanks go to Grandma Pati who also made Addison and Colin’s matching knit sweaters. Having these new sweaters made the decision about what to have them wear was easy. And they love wearing their sweaters! Rumour is that mom might be getting a sweater of her own as well!
TO DOWNLOAD FULL SIZE 5″ x 7″ printable versions of the photo at the links below each photo — this is for the grandparents! If you right-click on the links below and ‘save link as…’ you can save the jpg anywhere you’d like. Otherwise, it will open up in a new window (and then also open the picture up in a lightbox) where you can scroll through the other photos.
Download the full-size photo here.
Download the full-size photo here.
Download the full-size photo here.
Download the full-size photo here.
Past years photos with Santa:
