Storytime and Pictures with Santa Claus

I am the mother who waited until the week before Christmas to take her child for a picture with Santa.

We simply didn't have a weekend where we had time to go see him before then. I would feel bad, except it really worked in our favor. We had plenty of time to talk about him, look at his picture, talk about what we would say to him, that he says, "Ho ho ho," and convince Jack that it was nothing to be scared of.

I had quite a few vacation days left since I worked all of Thanksgiving week, so I took the Tuesday off before Christmas for a family event and to see jolly old St. Nick!

On our way to see Santa!
(But mostly excited that mom jailbroke him from the stroller.)
Northpark in Dallas probably has the best looking Santa in DFW. They have a not so complicated number system where they hand out numbers for the line starting at 9 AM. Santa doesn't start posing for pics until 11 AM, but the line forms to get numbers at 8:30 AM. You heard me: 8:30 for an 11 AM start time. We got there at 9:15 and got number 79 in line.

Before pictures, Santa has storytime at 10:30. He had his dog do tricks and told some cute little stories about Christmas around the world. We made it through storytime with the help of some popcorn and a stop by Starbucks for an apple juice.

Santa and his puppy
As crazy as this sounds, we had somewhere to be and couldn't wait to be #79 in line, so we loaded up and headed out. We went back on Thursday night with Daddy (same clothes, just washed and starched) for supper and the money shot. There were a million people there, but we packed our patience and just enjoyed the holiday hustle and bustle.

Jack didn't cry, and said, "Hi Santa!" just like we practiced. When the flash started going off, he was like, "what the heck?!?" So that is the face in the pic.

Our 2012 picture with Santa Claus