Visit to Santa, and other random thoughts

Last weekend we decided we HAD to buy Matthew new shoes so we headed off to the outlet mall. We hoped to get some Christmas shopping done also and planned to visit a huge store that has all things Christmas. Matthew woke up at 6am, early even for him! I got up with him and figured Scarlett would be up soon (she went to bed around 9 and hadn't gotten up during the night - that was 3 nights out of 4 so we are making progress) so I let David sleep and planned to shower after Scarlett ate. Well, she didn't get up until almost 10 so we got off to a really late start, considering it is over an hour drive to the outlet mall. Anyway, I got Scarlett fed then got ready to go and decided to pump in the car on our way - I was pretty engorged since she went so long without sleeping, even after she ate! I also thought it might make shopping easier if she would take a bottle, and figured if she didn't take the bottle I would still be able to feed her. So when we got to the Christmas store, I put her in the sling and tried feeding her - she GULPED down 8 oz of the bottle! She has never taken that much before, and never taken a bottle from me, other than in the car with my arm reaching over the seat! I love progress!

The Christmas store had a Santa Claus and the 2 nice things were that you got a coded sticker for your child, then they called the codes so you got in line then (no hours long wait) and you took the picture with your own camera - so no paying $20 for a single 5x7. I am very particular about Santas though - for pictures it has to be a "real Santa". When we were growing up I used to want to talk to every Santa we saw, and my mom would tell me "well he's not real, wait until we go see the real one" - and one Saturday we would make the trip to the mall (70 miles away, seemed like forever in those days) that had the real Santa. Now what, you may ask, makes a real Santa? It's actually pretty simple I think - everything about him is real - none of that fake beard business! So when we got the stickers for the kids, we asked the woman if Santa was real and she said yes. David actually said "his beard is real?" to double check, because the glance I caught of him from far away I didn't think he was real and she said "of course". So we got the stickers and waited until our code was called. We stood in line for about 5 minutes and then got up to see Santa. While this was a great personality Santa Claus, and he took a good bit of time with each child, he was NOT a REAL SANTA! How in the world could the huge Christmas superstore NOT have a REAL Santa?!?!?! So, we took their picture in his lap and made plans to take them to the mall to have their picture made with a real santa...not that they care, it's all about us, I know, but I don't feel like Christmas is complete without a Santa picture.

As for the rest of the trip - we bought several Christmas presents, we got Matthew some shoes, and it was overall a good day.