Yes, I Have Lost My Mind

So, I really started to feel bad that Avery didn't have a picture with Santa.... I started to get comments like, "What, you haven't? You have to take him to see Santa on his first Christmas!" It wasn't that I didn't want to, but working in Winston and living in Pilot Mountain, and having a husband in grad school at Wake Forest makes everything just slightly more complicated. Just slightly!

In an attempt to quiet the tightening feeling in my chest I planned to be at the mall at 10:00 a.m. Well, that would not be good enough. Not by a long shot. I stood in the line until about 11:40 when the not nice "elf" came around to tell us that if you weren't inside the gate at 12:15, it would be shut, and you would have to wait until Santa came back at 2:00. The girl behind me literally began weeping. There were 17 people in front of us and very little chance that we would make it in to the red gate.

12:15 came and I was three people behind the gate. Gate shut. Suck it kid, you ain't seein' Santa unless your mommy stands in the line for another hour and 45 minutes. I should mention that the very second I saw the size of the line I was ready to surrender, but Skylar felt it essential that he tell Santa what he wanted. I am a sucker for that kid. What choice did I have? I hunkered down, sent Mom and the boys to the food court and prepared myself for a long winters wait. I noticed that the line inside the red gate was moving with a quickness. I started to get very nervous. If they had time to get more people on the big guy's knee they would, problem was my bunch was MIA and my mom left her cell phone in the car.

A few minutes later comes the Christmas miracle. The "meanest" elf lady says to those of us in the front of the line that she is going to send some of us through. She asks the first three couples how many kids they had, and then she asked me. Before I could say a word, the weeper behind me says "ONE". Ummm, sweetheart you are precious, and I feel your pain, but I ain't about to let you pass me. Not on your life sweet cheeks. I hold up two fingers and she announces that the next 5 families can come through. Halle-freakin-lujah! As if on queue, Mom rounds the corner with three kids meals from Chick-fil-a! Suh-weet!

Needless to say, the rest was a mad dash. The pictures were ridiculously over priced, it was rushed, but it was over and I didn't have to worry about Avery someday thinking I was a piece of crap mother for not taking him to see Santa on his first Christmas.

Next year I will take a day off of work before Christmas Eve or I will participate in some activity that involves a Santa Visit. We are totally doing the the Gingerbread House session at the Children's Museum, hopefully breakfast with Santa at the Graleyn, and Leslie told me while I was in the Santa line that she went to some cool thing downtown with a Santa and you could take as many pictures as you wanted. What the what???

Water under the bridge. If I hadn't gone, I would have always regretted it, and imagined it much more glamorous than it was. Below are the fruits of my labor. They were too stinkin' expensive to get one of each of them and a combined shot. Ahhh, next year!