Lightening things up with a visit to Santa!

Yesterday, we took the boys to Springfield Mall to see Santa. The mall offered us free pictures plus a very nice gift bag and some gift certificates so I jumped at the chance. I rarely have a chance anymore to take advantage of mom blog events, so I was thrilled we could do this one.

We had "fast pass" access (yes, I did feel guilty when I saw how long the line was), and it was awesome!

Noah pretty much raced up to Santa and plopped himself down right between his legs, leaving no room for Kiel. I got him rearranged and Kiel settled and then smiles and clicks and we had two photos to choose from. While I picked the pic, Santa asked what they wanted for Christmas.
 

Noah wants 50 pounds of bubble gum in his stocking. Pink. With red dye. Santa got a chuckle out of that one.*

Kiel wants Transformers.

After we recieved our pictures (again, thanks Springfield Mall for the full package, plus a $20 gift card to Shutterfly!) Rich and I split up with the kids to help them do their Christmas shopping. I took Kiel first and we quickly took care of his present for Rich. Then we wandered through several stores (including a dollar store and the Disney store where Kiel found lots of things he wanted so he thought they would be perfect for Noah). 

Eventually we ended up at Target, where we ran into Rich and Noah. Noah took me through the toy aisles to show me a few things he liked, then Kiel and I went back and I worked hard at steering Kiel to toys Noah liked, not toys Kiel wanted. I have some work to do with Kiel on what gift giving means. 

We finally finished our mission and Rich took everything to pay while I took the boys back into the mall to wait. It was insanely busy in Target in the toy area and I may have had a mini anxiety attack where I told Rich I had to get the f*&k out of there and got a little bossy about what we were going to do next. OK fine, the bossy part had nothing to do with the anxiety. I'm just bossy.

See behind the boys into the entrance of Target? I tried to take the cart out in my rush to get away from all the peoples. Alarms went off. Then the cart wouldn't move. Something in the floor(?) locked the wheels or did something so I couldn't push the cart forward. I got a little flustered. Noah saved me. 

Well, actually, I grabbed my purse and bag of goodies and pretty much shoved the cart to Noah to take back into the store. I was proud of him. He managed his mother well in her moment of crisis.

Yes, this is how I felt then. And no, the picture above it is not of the boys comforting each other while they waited for Rich to save them. I'm shocked you would even think that.

After that we went to Carrabba's Italian Grill for dinner. I had a blackberry sangria and life was good. Our waiter thought the boys were great (despite, maybe because of?, the shoe and sock that went flying out of the booth and the under-booth wrestling that followed I was too busy looking at the drinks menu to notice). He didn't even blink when I told him I needed something big and fruity to drink - just recommended the sangria.

Our dinner was great and both boys shared their chocolate sundaes with us at the end. 

Then Noah and I went to Macy's to pick out a tie for Rich (shhh...don't tell him, I want it to be a surprise). I had to explain to Noah that it might make his dad a little uncomfortable if he bought him a Christmas tie, considering he was Jewish. So then Noah decided to pick out a tie that looked Jewish. I don't quite know what he considers "Jewish looking," but he found several that he felt met the criteria. He has good taste. (I did have to tell him not to bother looking at the Don.ald Tru.mp table, because we were boycotting The Don.ald. He didn't even roll his eyes at me, he just moved on.)

On our way out to meet Rich and Kiel we went past the makeup counters. One of them had very loud music playing. I commented to Noah that I really must be getting old, because there was no way I could pick out makeup with music playing that loud. 

He laughed and said "Mom, you aren't old, you'll never be old. You can do anything." (And that Noah, is why you are my favorite child!)

It was a great afternoon and we all enjoyed ourselves. I'm very appreciative of Springfield Mall for the invitation and all the goodies. I don't think we would have taken the boys to see Santa this year (because I'm cheap about paying for pictures of Santa and will do anything not to go to a mall during the holidays) if it hadn't been for this offer.

*Santa better come through on this one. Noah still talks about the year he was three and he asked Santa for a Chick race car from the Cars movie. His request to Santa that year was the first we heard him mention Chick, and when we checked into it we realized Chick was the "mean" car in the movie, so we didn't get it for him. We got him a bunch of other cars that year, but not Chick. Who knew he would still remember that six years later. Just another awesome parenting moment. Oy.