We headed out to visit Santa's Wonderland yesterday morning, which was the same place we went last year. We've been talking about going to see Santa for the last two weeks and needless to say, the kids were pumped. We wandered through the store looking at all of the (hunting and fishing) displays before we headed down to Santa Central.
After all of the anticipation you can probably imagine how my heart dropped (and my mind raced!) when one of the employees told us that Santa wasn't in yet.
What do you mean he's not here yet?
3 o'clock. 3:00??? But it's only 11am!!!!
How could this happen???!
[Derek is shaking his head]
Why didn't I check the hours online?!
["You didn't check the hours online?", says his evil eye]
But we visited last year on a Friday morning!!
[Both of us keep glancing at the kids to register their reaction to the news]
As I am trying to wrap my head around what in the hell we're going to do now, we keep walking to Santa's Wonderland so that we can see the model trains. Meanwhile, and multi-tasking, I start madly searching for nearby Santa's on my phone.
I manage to locate a Santa at a nearby mall while the kids watch the trains.
We stop by to see the talking reindeer and we start explaining that we are going on a Santa Adventure (aka, Santa is not here and we need to go to the closest crappy mall to find him so that we can TRY to prevent Mommy's fail from ruining Christmas).
Bless their little hearts they were not disturbed in the least by the change in plans. We put coats back on, headed out to the car, and drove to the crappy mall which was thankfully only 10 minutes away.
Not surprisingly, the crappy mall was completely dead when we arrived at 11:30. Silas spotted the Santa setup from 100 yards away and took off running as fast as he could, yelling "SANTA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (exactly like he did last year). Zoe ran after him (just like last year), and together they blasted through the archway and fell straight into Santa's arms (which were open, he must have heard/saw them coming). Derek and I were running after them but were a bit behind, so thank goodness there was no line of people because we wouldn't have been able to stop them from running through anyone who stood in their way from getting straight to Santa. As we were running I was fumbling to get out my phone in order to catch a few shots of this precious moment. We immediately start getting yelled at by the Scrooge photographer. "No pictures! And I'm only letting them do this because I'm assuming you're going to buy a package!", Scrooge snapped. I shot him the nastiest look and curtly informed him the only reason we were at this crappy mall in the first place was to purchase a G.D. picture with Santa.
Crappy Mall Santa was SO nice, even if the photographer was not. He talked with the kids for a few minutes, asking if they had been good, and if so, what did they want for Christmas (Zoe, "slippers"; Silas, "slippers". Apparently our children have really cold feet). Then we took the token picture.
We ended our Santa Adventure with one of Silas' favorite things ("we goin' to a rest-oo-rant?").
Part II of our day of Santa took place after a nice, long nap. We headed over to the kids' school where the mayor's annual trolley tour would be stopping to light the wreath. It was raining and cold and there were LOTS of people crammed onto a narrow sidewalk in front of the community center.
Thankfully we got a prime spot and there was hot chocolate and cookies to nosh on while we waited for Santa and the gang to arrive.
Before we knew it the caravan arrived!
There was music and singing and confetti, and best of all there was SANTA!
Zoe and Silas can't stop talking about sitting on Santa's lap, and hugging him, and talking to him. Zoe was also so happy to sing "Jingle Bells" at the wreath lighting. I am relieved to say that if they remember anything at all from this day, it most definitely will not be my Mommy Fail Moment.
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