"Holiday in the Park"

Or should I call it: "Hell-iday in the Park"

Let me back track and discuss the earlier part of the day as many have already seen the end result.

We hosted our Thursday afternoon playgroup at our house that day - which makes for a long day anyway as I am always racing to clean and prepare like a bad 'Trading Spaces' episode. There was a local 'Holiday in the Park' festival going on, so a few of us decided to try it out afterwards. It was probably 6:30 or so before we got there.

The first part of the evening was a lot of fun for the kiddos. Laney was pretty much stuck in the stroller. She's a runner. Carter is too, actually, but I usually know where he's off to! Laney, it's any one's guess. Anyway, Carter got to ride down the snow hill and he and Andrew must have gone through the bounce houses 20 times. Will strolled around a while and checked everything else out, and then... we saw S A N T A. When we first arrived, the line was pretty long. As the evening wore on, we noticed the line was much better, so we got in. And waited. And waited. And waited. For the love of Pete, we waited for probably an hour and half to see stinkin' Santa. The kids were all excited at first. Andrew and Carter kept each other entertained. A little girl from Carter's class at school was behind us, and she and Laney played for a while (thank you, dear, sweet, precious Evin). About half way through, the kids started pulling the 'we want to go home' mess. No way. Sonya and I decided that we had waited this long, we're in it for the long haul now. The kicker was there wasn't anyone moving the groups along when they went for pictures. Some folks were there for 10+ minutes!

I really don't need to say more. The progression of the pictures tells it all.

And finally... the only picture with Santa from the night...

If Laney could have stopped crying long enough to catch her breath... I think she would have said, 'Save yourself, Bro Bro!!' I literally put C on Santa's lap kicking and screaming. Santa must have had a death grip on his arm to not let him escape. At one point while I was getting "situated," Santa looked up at me and asked,' What do you want to do, Mom?'

'HOLD THEM. I am not leaving without a picture.'

HO. HO. HO.