Christmas Eve Eve

One of our traditions is to go to a movie on Christmas Eve Eve.  This year, we had put off meeting Santa so we decided to have a superfun day and do that as well.  We cleaned the whole house first, then took off for the mall where we spent 3 hours in line.  It seriously didn't look that long, but the picture taking people were just doing one person at a time and taking forever about it.  The Santa was nice and spent time with each kid, but often, he was just sitting there with no one on his lap.  It was very frustrating.  We got within 4 groups of him when he took a half hour break.  Luke ran and got us something to eat from the food court so it wasn't completely wasted time.  When he came back and we finally got our turn, I realized that this was not the same Santa and he was totally not giving the same quality time to each kid.  He basically shoved Strawberry and Apple away after 20 seconds.  I was furious.

By this time Strawberry had missed her gymnastics lesson, so we decided to go straight to the theater and buy tickets for the next showing of The Tale of Despereaux.  Our amazing bad luck held and the next showing was for over 2 hours later.  Grrrr.  There was a Bass Pro Shop nearby so we decided to go over there to try to kill time instead of going home.  They have huge fish tanks and stuffed animals and ORVs to climb around on.  It turned out there was another Santa here so we jumped in line and killed another 45 minutes.  This Santa was much better and talked to them for a little while.  Apple was a little confused since she had just met Santa.  Strawberry's belief in him had been wavering over the past few weeks, but decided the mall Santas were just helpers anyway.  

We finally got in to the movie and it was terrible.  I almost couldn't stand sitting through it.  I think it was their pink noses.  They were really grossing me out.  Maybe the movie was okay, but it was just nauseating.  

So, yeah, Christmas Eve Eve stunk this year.  Next year, we are meeting Santa in November.  We saw a couple of movies after Christmas that we liked much better.  Bedtime Stories was really cute and we really enjoyed Marley and Me, though we had to fight back tears.  Strawberry has decided we are definitely getting a dog and we are naming him Marley.  The other morning, Apple decided to wake up Strawberry, and Strawberry yelled, "Stop it, I'm trying to keep my dream!!"  She wandered in to the living room a minute later with her eyes tightly shut.  "Mom, I'm holding on to my dream because it is my dog and if I open my eyes, it will get away."  I had to get her giant stuffed chocolate lab (which replaced her real-life Cheseapeake Bay Retriever Chewbacca when he got to be too much for us 3 years ago--he was much worse than Marley) before she could open her eyes.  It was too cute.