Santa No No No

Our neighborhood Realtors do a great event every year at their office where the kids can go and see Santa and we get a free 5x7 photo on Santa's lap. Since free events are what we live for these days, we were up and at 'em early and out the door by 8:30. Meadow looked adorable, of course, and was so excited to see Santa. The office is decorated like crazy so she had a blast just checking everything out. There were lots of kids in line and she was having fun singing and jumping with them in excitement to see the big guy.

Mike and I had a feeling that she would have a minor melt down getting placed on his lap, and we were right! I tried to slyly just back her up to Santa and as I sat her down, trying to smooth her dress she lost it! Tears immediately and the poor guy in the Santa suit looked horrified. We tried to yell from behind the camera, like that would do anything! I am hoping the shot they got captured her at the peak of her performance. Anyone can have a cute posed photo with Santa, but not all of us can have the picture to tease your kids about for years, and years to come! They tried to get me to stand in the picture to help her calm down...but what fun would that be?

As we left his lap Meadow slowly began to clam down, but kept the sad act up long enough to get Santa's little helpers to give her extra toys and candy canes. I'm on to her...and very impressed with her tactics!

We left the office and went to the Christmas tree lot to pick out the perfect tree. We of course had to ask where the Douglas firs were since we were in the middle of all the $100 trees! Our tree is beautiful, and Mike is adding decorations as I type. I hope he knows the right ball to bow ratio, and which ornaments get gently placed in the back of the tree. Meadow is helping also, stroking Mike's ego by telling him how pretty the lights look, and she's almost done unraveling the entire ball of ribbon. I better go clean up this mess!

More to come, hopefully soon. we were in Cleveland for Thanksgiving and I will spare you all the details of the awesome stomach flu that wiped the entire house out like the plague.