Off to see Santa

We went to Dothan this afternoon in hopes to start some Christmas shopping and to let Alex visit Santa. We went to the mall first and decided to head straight to Santa. As we walked up to Santa, we saw the most horrendous line ever. I told Larry to forget it - I did not want to stand in that line just to get up to Santa and have Alex freak out! Luckily, we discovered that the LONG line was for Iron Bowl shirts and not for Santa. Alabama fans had lined up to purchase their Iron Bowl victory shirts!

We got in line for Santa and were happy that the line was moving quickly and it wasn’t too awful long! While waiting in line, Alex ate a snack of Kix cereal and Cheerios and kept pointing happily at Santa! We hoped that was a good sign. By the time we finally made it up to Santa, Alex was pointing and waving at him – surely that was a good thing! I put him in Santa’s lap and he started clapping and smiling. He even looked back at Santa and smiled at him – GREAT!! We were going to have a successful Santa visit! Oh no, that was not in the cards for us today. After Alex sitting in Santa’s lap for a minute or so, one of the teenagers working as an “elf” let us know that the printer had run out of paper so it would be a minute. The suggested getting Alex out of Santa’s lap so he didn’t get bored just sitting there! I did – he was still pointing at Santa and waving. After what seemed like forever, the girl finally came back with paper for the printer and told me to go ahead and put Alex back in Santa’s lap – I did. He was a little bit leery at this point. Although, I was able to get a smile out of him for at least one of the pictures that the “elf” snapped. My heart dropped when I heard the “elf” tell me that the picture didn’t take. He told that me that I should probably take Alex out of Santa’s lap while they fixed the camera. I took him away from Santa for the second time. When the teenaged “elves” finally fixed the camera and told me to place Alex in Santa’s lap for the third time, Alex slightly clung to me and did not want to go back to the man dressed in red! I walked away and Larry and I noticed the look of fear in his eyes – we knew that we were not getting the smiley child and Santa picture we had hoped for! We were able to get one picture of Alex and Santa. As you can see in the picture, there is fear in Alex’s eye and not much of a smile on his face. We are lucky that the camera did not capture any tears though! We ordered the package in which we got the picture saved to a thumb drive and the “elf” told me that I was able to get three images on thumb drive – I told him that I was not putting my crying child on Santa’s lap again! We walked away with only one picture!