Ethan Meets St. Nick

Ethan FINALLY met Santa for the first time! Yea! Now, here goes the story ... After church Sunday afternoon, Chris and I decided to take Ethan to the Carolina Place Mall in Pineville to get his picture made with Santa. We obviously waited until the last minute, but not by choice. We've had something to do every weekend for the past three weeks so this was our only opportunity. We fed him in the car and hoped he would sleep on the way. That didn't work out as planned because he kept coughing and waking himself up because he's, surprise surprise, getting a cold, again. Once we got to the mall, Chris and I were starving so we wanted to get lunch first. We passed the line for Santa and it didn't look long, so we were thrilled about that. So, we made our way over to the food court and ate lunch. Afterwards, we came back to see Santa and discovered that there is in fact a line, for a pager. A pager to see Santa. The wait was THREE HOURS! I about fell over in the floor. We thought about it and figured if we were here, we might as well do it. I did not want to come back and try it again on another day and we didn't have the opportunity to do so anyways. So, we reluctantly took a pager and proceeded to begin our wait. We had all the time in the world and tried to figure out what to do with our time. Here's what we did:

Top 10 Things you can do at the mall to pass
the time while you're waiting for Santa ...

1. Grab lunch at McAllisters (this is BEFORE we discovered the wait was 3 hours!!! That would've been nice to know BEFORE we ate lunch! I don't sound bitter do I?)
2. Window shop all the clothes you can't afford anymore
3. Avoid the salesmen at the kiosks trying to sell you a miracle cream or hair extensions
4. Let Ethan run around outside the Wolf Camera store while Chris is inside drooling over the merchandise
5. Go into Build A Bear to just browse
6. See an old friend and chat for half an hour
7. Go to every department store in the mall to find a certain item for a certain someone (it's hush hush), and not find it
8. Sit in Barnes and Nobles with a cup of coffee and a magazine, while the other half tries to put a baby to sleep
9. Baby doesn't want to sleep, so I took him over to the children's book section so he can roam around and play with the train set
10. Baby FINALLY falls asleep

Of course, with our luck, after Ethan had his afternoon bottle, he was OUT COLD! When I say OUT COLD, I mean OUT COLD! His head was just bobbing around and was barely moving. I just started making jokes about Santa holding Ethan as he is sleeping. That would make for a great story to tell when he's older about how we waited THREE hours to see Santa. I kept thinking, "Man - this better be worth the $21.99 we're about to spend!" About five minutes before we were to see Santa, Ethan wakes up all bright eyed, bushy tailed and rosy cheeked! He was in a great mood and that's exactly what we wanted! He just sat like a good little boy that he is on Santa's lap and just smiled and waved. He finally looked up at Santa and stared in amazement. He wasn't scared at all! That's my big boy! He waved bye-bye to his new buddy and we left the mall exhausted, but we got our picture. It was well worth the trip!

Finally, here is the picture you've been waiting for, which turns out way better than I expected. Ethan is such a good boy and such a trooper for all the mess that his parents put him in. He really was patient and calm and we are oh so grateful!