Ho Ho Ho!

I know you are dying to see Jack with Santa but I wanted to show you the best morning entertainment EVER. Aunt Mary Beth bought Jack The Elf on the Shelf last year at Holly Days and we have had the most fun with it. Of course reading the book was not something Jack could handle at this age...but finding the elf every morning is! Him and Nick are too cute searching the house trying to be the first one to shout out, "Elf" when they find it. I'm doing it in my class with another little elf I found and it has been so much fun to watch them as well. Can't wait til he gets older and is able to help us name him and understand the important job that the elf has representing the big man himself.

So I decided to give up on visiting the Santa at Northpark this year...I need to accept we live in the country and just go with it. The new mall that is being built a few exits up had been advertising a great Santa, a friend sent her pictures, and so Saturday we decided to give it a try. Being a weekend I looked up the times and we were there a few minutes before they opened. Well, Nick stayed in the car with Jack as long as he could while I froze my ass off standing outside for an hour in line to meet the jolly man himself.
This was about as close as Jack would get to the reindeer, he did enjoy the music every 20 minutes from the 50 foot Christmas tree, and sadly the mini train wasn't running yet (he would have been sick to his stomach though with all the time we had waiting to ride the train). People in line didn't care how long the wait was or how cold it was...turns out this Santa has quit a following as he was previously at the Stonebriar Mall in Frisco. I know that the lady in front of me if we had to wait any longer would have been added to our Christmas card list because we had plenty of time to visit in line.



I thought Jack was going to do well with Santa despite his recent caricature fear. He says, "Ho, Ho, Ho every time he sees Santa (TV, the animal Bebe got him, and the picture on the Coke can). He even said it to the cart man at Sam's that was wearing a red sweatshirt and hat. We let him look at children on Santa's lap in line and all seemed good...until it was finally his turn.

"Can you see my teeth from there Dad?"

"I mean really-waiting an hour, risking being attacked by reindeer...nothing is enough for you...are you really walking away Dad-Papa would never do this to me."

"What are you looking at kids? You're going to get dumped and left on this fat man's lap too...just wait...in about 45 minutes from where you are it's your turn."

"OK Mom...are you freaking happy...the tears have stopped, she retook it, now someone (even you Mom) come and get me off this old man's lap."

"This is my consolation prize...a coloring book....how am I even going to color in it since you took away my crayons and only let me use the Color Wonder no color markers? Can we please go home?"