Today, Preston and I brought Dash to see Santa for the second time. Preston was unhappy with our photos of Dash from his first visit with Santa, at Costco. I thought the photo turned out OK, but I have to agree: That Santa -- with his fake beard and floppy wig -- wasn't fooling anyone. Even my 7-year-old niece took one look and commented that he wasn't the real Santa, just some guy dressed up as Santa because Santa must be busy doing something else.

Notice the poinsettias wrapped in plastic in the background (they are for sale):

Above is the photo we took. To see the zoomed out version that Costco provided us, visit  http://bit.ly/sq6tC9. Not only is the warehouse ceiling and part of the "optometrist" sign visible, but you also can see a kid waiting at the front of the line! But can we really complain? The visit was free. And we're thankful to Costco.

Nonetheless, this is Dash's first Christmas, and Preston wanted to make sure we had a nice photo. We strolled down to Pioneer Square to see the Santa there, but the line had maybe 30 people in it. Note, this was the Santa that used to work at Macy's, but got the boot when Macy's decided to go with a different vendor. Besides the long wait, at $20 for just one photo, we decided to check out the new Macy's Santa. We'd heard of the controversy over Macy's new policy of not requiring Santa to have a real beard. So we weren't sure what to expect.

He looked great, even if his beard wasn't real. The line was very short. Plus, Macy's lets visitors sit on Santa's lap for free (although Santa's elves also sell photo packages). Here's one of the photos we took. Maybe we should have sprung for the professional photo. Oh Well. It's still a cute photo:

Merry Christmas everyone!