Santa at Northpark on Christmas Eve

The first question that probably comes to mind is why in the world would I wait until Christmas Eve day to take James to the mall for pictures with Santa??? This last month flew by and I had planned on the three of us going as a family to Northpark to take James to visit Santa. Sean works every Saturday and lately I have been working every Sunday. Tuesdays are Sean's day off but he has been so busy in November & December that he had to go into work. I have to brag on my wonderful husband; Sean was the number one salesperson in the entire dealership and sold 22 cars in November! I am so proud of him. Anyway, December flew by and I did not find time for us to go as planned. So I asked Mildred, our amazing babysitter (she prefers nanny so I will refer to her is that), to go to lunch with us at Northpark and take James to visit Santa. I knew her husband was working and she didn't get to go see her family in Houston for Christmas so I wanted to take her to lunch as a small thank you for all that she does for us. I could go on and on about Mildred. She is not only James' nanny but she is now part of our family and I have no idea what I would do without her. I will write another post on how we met almost 4 years ago and my mom loves to remind me how bossy and pushy I thought she was at first and I wasn't sure if I liked her! (Sorry Mildred if you are reading this, you know I love you now!)

Back to Santa. We got to Northpark at 11:00 a.m. when I knew we could line up for pictures. But instead of lining up I was given a number, 193, and told to come back at 2:00 p.m.! I knew it would be busy but had no idea everyone else waited until the last day too! Luckily we ran into the Jennifer & Trey and kids and their family and we got to visit with them for a while then headed to Maggiano's for lunch. By the time we were finished it was time to go back for pictures. I have never seen anything like it. There was an old man standing on a bench in front of crowds of kids, parents, and strollers. He started yelling out numbers and told us to line up in order and to hand him our tickets when we got in line. He started with 100 and ended with 268 and yes, we were number 193. At this point James was sleeping through the madness. Once again thank God for Mildred (I say that often). We took turn standing in lines and entertaing James. When we lined up we were told it would be one hour until Santa. After about 45 minutes there was a power surge and the digital camera which was hooked up to a computer crashed. After 30 minutes of them trying to fix it and the line not moving I went to ask if we could please take our own pictures with Santa if we had our own cameras? The lady in charge said yes but we still had to stay in line. We were almost to the front of the line and the computer/camera came back on! So after three hours at the mall and two hours of standing in line, James' first Christmas is officially documented with a picture of him sitting on Santa's lap, looking a little tired but that's ok! =) Next year I will definitely take him the week after Thanksgiving, on a weekday, in the morning. I specifically asked the girl that checked us out/printed the picture when is the least busy time to come and that is what she told me. The first picture with Santa is the one the photographer took and the second one is from my camera. I love that James is looking at Santa like "Who are you?" At least he didn't cry or pull his beard! He loves pulling my hair so I was honestly worried that he might think Santa's beard would be fun to pull too.

Mildred & James
Snowing on Christmas Eve!
Mommy & James waiting in line

James & Santa

Who are you?