Santa Claus is coming ... to town!!

Well, we did a "first" this weekend .. we went to the mall to see Santa Claus! Usually, our friend, Kiki (Charina), has a close connection to Santa and he comes to OUR house to see us ... but she seems to have lost his number when they moved this year so we had to go see him this time. (Do you like the story we came up with for Riley? ha ha)

We anxiously stood in line waiting. I'm assuming the people taking the pictures didn't have kids of their own for two reasons ... 1) They kept shooting and shooting to get that "perfect" picture of the kids with Santa. While I have to applaud them on the effort, most kids aren't going to give you that picture perfect grin when they're sitting on a strangers lap, Santa or not ... and 2) I don't think they had any idea how hard it was for the kids in line to stand still for that long. :)

Finally it was our turn. Riley marched right up there and sat on Santa's lap and we waited for the "picture people" to get everything ready before we did a dump and run with Paige. To my suprise though, Paige didn't cry at all. She sat there looking at Riley for a while ... then the strange man in the white beard ... and then the crazy people behind the camera who were trying trying all kinds of things to get her to smile. I finally had to just tell the "picture people" that it was okay if they weren't smiling .. just take the darn picture. (See, I think this is where I differ from the "mall studios" ... some of my favorite pictures of the kids are when they're not smiling. Kids don't smile 100% of the time ... and *geez* do we ALL know this ... so why have all the pictures of them smiling? End rant)

Riley told Santa that he wanted a camera (check), some Transformers (need), something with Spiderman (or was it Superman ... need to ask daddy and then find something) and something with Star Wars (check). Santa told Riley that he had to make sure to leave out two chocolate chip cookies and a glass of 2% milk for him (we have a picky Santa here I guess) and some carrots and celery for the reindeer. Oh, and we're supposed to go outside on Christmas morning to make sure the reindeer didn't make a mess while they were eating. Riley's made a mental note of all of this and told Santa he'd be sure to do all of that!!

So after all of that, we get to the point of buying this wonderful photograph. For $16 we get a 5 x 7 photo that was taken with a $5k camera (I looked) and printed on a desktop inkjet printer. I wasn't impressed to say the least. Whatever ... Riley got to see Santa. I got my 20% off coupon for Gymboree (Black Friday here I come). Paige got to be confused for a bit. And Ryan got a lighter checkbook. :)