Santa visit

Every year we go see Santa so the girls can tell him what they want. Since Santa arrives at the mall in mid-November, we usually go see him early before the lines get ridiculously long.

Usually.

I don't know what it is about this year, but since Thanksgiving I can hardly catch my breath. I finally found a free afternoon to take the girls to see Santa, but it was on a weekend and Bryan was out of town. Undaunted, I had the girls dress up and we went to the mall. At first I thought the line wasn't terribly long - 45 min to an hour maybe - so instead of walking all the way around to the formal entrance, we just ducked under the rope. We were there about 5 minutes before the lady in front of us turned around and told us that she had been tagged the last person before Santa's lunch break. Sure enough, her photo order form said "Last". She pointed to the formal entrance, which had been roped off, and there was another line already in place for after his hour-long lunch break.

Hm... 45 minutes for this line, an hour for lunch, and a good 30 minutes according to the other line. No way.

So I promised the girls we'd try to go on a weekday evening and last night we finally accomplished our task.

The girls had dentist appointments at 4, Bryan met us at the house about 5 and we were in line by 6 p.m. Forty-five minutes later.... we arrived at a very tired looking Santa, who nevertheless brightened and smiled at the girls, inviting them to tell him what they wanted for Christmas. As the girls tell him, he glances up at me waiting for that slight nod that it's okay to say, "I think I might have some of those left at the workshop. I'll put one aside for you."

The "elf" who took our photo leaned over and said, "Your girls were the easiest photo I've taken all day."

I hear that a lot.

I thought it came out beautiful myself.

(You might want to check out our Santa blog post from two years ago to remember how much we appreciate this Santa. I also love that Brenna and Cameron are wearing the same dress 2006/2008. Did the dress shrink or is Brenna taller/larger at 6 than Cameron was at 7?)