Santa

As college-educated individuals, I like to think Andi and I have a good batch of smarts between the two of us. Except on Sunday, we did one of the dumbest things you can do around the holidays: we went to the mall to see Santa ON A WEEKEND. It basically came down to timing (read: we don't have it). I wanted it to be something we did as a family and since Andi's been working so much lately, yesterday seemed like the only day we could go. We checked Santa's hours online and found he opened shop at Noon. Our thought - our naive first-time parents thought - was we'd get there right at Noon so we'd be first in line. Bahahahahaha ... yeah, right.

After a screaming drive to the mall (Tory, not us, although we'd want to later), we walked up to Santa's area to find this:

HOLY CRAP.

The line wrapped through all the stanchions and back down the hallway. It was just this long because he wasn't open yet, right? Everyone has strollers and that's taking up extra space, right? We got in line and waited. And waited. And waited. A little while later a man asked me how long we'd been waiting in line. "Noon," I said. It was now 12:45pm and I realized we'd only made it through one set of stanchions. WE STILL HAD FIVE MORE ROWS TO GO.

Luckily Tory was happily content watching all the commotion surrounding us, and of course all the lights and sounds around the mall. I guess she's never been to the mall before; she really liked it. My ADHD husband, on the other hand, was going bonkers. I gave him a pass to go walk around for a while while Tory and I waiting in line some more. Eventually, she fell asleep in my arms WHICH NEVER HAPPENS and I laid her in the stroller for a nap. Andi returns with an Iced Coffee drink for me which I slurped down in record speed because there's nothing else to do but stand and wait. An hour passed and Tory woke up. I called Andi on the phone to tag-team him back into the line so I could go feed Tory on a nearby bench. By the way, inhaling a caffeinated beverage on an empty stomach isn't a good idea when you're trapped in a never-ending Santa line. For the record.

At 1:30PM, over an hour of waiting, this was getting silly. Do we bail? I could come back on one of my days off, but Andi would be working and he'd miss Tory's first visit with Santa. Plus, what if the weather is bad this week and I don't feel like dragging Tory out of the house and we were already there and she was all dressed up and .... CRAP, what to do? Since Tory wasn't melting down and we were already half-way to Santa, we decided to wait it out.

We feel your pain, kiddo. We're almost there.

At 2PM, a rumble started to circulate through the line of anxious parents and kids. Santa would be taking a break FOR AN HOUR at 2:30pm. If we didn't make it to the front of the line in 30 minutes, all of this waiting would be for nothing. Parents around us were starting to up roar. The line behind us still stretched on as far as it did when we began this crazy quest for Santa. Andi and I looked at each other in pure exhaustion. I cannot believe we are one of the parents who stood in line for over 2 hours to see Santa.

At 2:20pm, we finally reached him.

Tory's first visit with Santa

And it was priceless.