Christmas in August

Our final destination on day one of the trip was Santa Claus, Indiana. The place where it is Christmas 365 days a year.

The girls marching into Santa's Candy Castle to shop and get a frozen hot chocolate.

Outside the Candy Castle, Alyssa now feeling the effects of that frozen hot chocolate {it was very frozen, and very, VERY chocolatey, almost too much so, which sounds crazy coming from a chocolate lover}.

As I mentioned in the previous post, we drove down this way a little more than six years ago. The town of Santa Claus is so cute, and we knew at that time that we would eventually come back once Rebekah was old enough to appreciate and remember it. This ended up being the summer to make the trip, since we also didn't want Alyssa to have entirely "outgrown" the fun of it all.

It makes sense that there are Santas everywhere in Santa Claus. The idea crossed my mind to take photos of all the Santas we saw, then make clever little comments about their expressions, but it must have been a short lived thought because I think I have only three...

And I'm coming up short on the clever comments...some of their expressions were the expected jolly old st.nick type, others were funny or odd...

and some were just slightly concerning.

This Santa is a strong fitness proponent for all his adoring fans.

I saw at least one Santa up on a store roof top trying to get in the chimney, a missed photo opportunity is all I can write that up to be. It really did feel at least a bit like Christmas throughout the town ~ even in August. It was kind of fun to have Santa greeting us at the Post Office, in the grocery store and outside Subway.

Again because it's fun to look back at old photos ~ this is how the Post Office Santa looked when we saw him in 2006. He's had a makeover in the last six years, or at least the box he is holding up has. Ho Ho Ho!