Christmas Windows and Santa

While we were in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago, we went into the city with my sister Nicki and Alex and their kids on our last night.  We had often seen on the news how Myer goes all out in decorating their windows with a new Christmas theme each year, so were looking forward to seeing it for ourselves.   Nicki told us that it can take 9 months for them to plan and build each display ready for Christmas the next year.

They had only just unveiled the windows a couple of nights before.  There was a little bit of a line up to see the windows but it wasn't too bad.
We had to laugh when we noticed that this window had no line and no one looking at it.   It's very sad really, but I guess that people just don't find the real reason why we celebrate Christmas as exciting as moving gingerbread men.

The rest of the windows were based around a children's picture book about a gingerbread man and at each window it read a couple of pages to you.  There were lots of things moving in each window and they were all decorated so beautifully.

This was my favourite window - the cakes and treats all looks so real and pretty.

After looking at the windows we went up to the Christmas shop at Myer and were excited to visit Santa.  It's big business in Melbourne as they had about four or five different doors you could go into (to keep the crowd moving) and in each room was a different Santa (obviously the kids didn't know that).  The people who work at Myer take you in and were so lovely to the kids and made it lots of fun.  There was even a reindeer asleep in front of the fire who was breathing and looked very life like as it's tummy would go up and down like it was breathing.
We thought that the only chance we would have of getting a photo taken with Santa was if we paid for one, but they said it was okay to take our own! 

All the kids told Santa what they wanted for Christmas.  Linc was just happy with the beard they had just been given by the Myer workers :)

 After seeing Santa the shorter kids were able to go on a train ride which went around Santa's house a few times.  We couldn't believe that it was free!  They were even given train tickets which I think Linc was more excited about, than the actual ride.

The kids loved it so much.

Jay and Harri cracked me up as they pretended they were upset they couldn't have a ride.  Kobe thought it was very funny that they couldn't get on too.

It was nice to be able to start doing some Christmas things with Nicki and her family and also my Mum.