we're working on it. here goes the story......
so we're at the bass pro shop, shopping for papa bear of course. they are nice to offer complimentary photos with santa. so as you may remember last year, sister bear was not going for the whole sitting on santa's lap thing. so i had to be apart of her tug-of-war photo experience (pregnant and all). so this year, i thought, maybe we have to take baby steps and warm her up to santa by visiting him fairly early at the mall this year.. or wherever we can find him. our first run in with mr jolly was when we were in oklahoma, visiting with nana and we headed to the mall one day... santa was there! this was before thanksgiving, we were surprised by his early arrival, but that's when the idea hit me, "lets go and say hello to santa!" sister bear was brave enough to take my hand and go and say hello, he complimented her on her bright yellow crocs and all the fun little gadgets she had attached to them. oh, i got so excited that he was conversing with her.. this did not impress her one bit. so we said, we'll try again another day, at least she made her way to him.
our next run in with mr red pants was when we got to texas, we stopped in to daddy's home away from home aka "the bass pro shop", where we discovered "santa's workshop" and all the fixins. parents, take your kids here, it is quite an experience with "arts and crafts" tables where they can write their "dear santa...." letters, mini shooting range (for all you hunting families), trains, snow and more! they have coffee, hot cocoa and roasted nuts for us grown ups while we watch the little ones run around! now at this specific location they have 2 santas, one is very short and looks like the real deal and the other is very tall, young and thin and maybe might want to wait till he's about 50, has been married a while and has had a chance to fatten up a little and then maybe we'll believe he's santa. so being that they did a santa shift change, it made sister bear think about sitting on this guy's lap. we asked her gently, "do want to go and visit santa? mama will come with you?" she was not the least bit interested. not even minutes later, short santa went speeding by on his scooter. we mentioned that his sleigh was getting ready for the big day and santa was riding around visiting kids on his scooter. still no interest out of sister bear. but she did play in the fake snow and sat down to color a bit.
well, just the other day when we were back at the bass pro shop, doing our papa bear christmas shopping, i thought maybe some time has gone by and we can think about stopping by santa's workshop again. tall, skinny santa was in, she wasn't going to give him the time of day... until, we sat down to color. out of nowhere came santa and he was very slick about sitting down at the table across from sister bear and began coloring. i nudged sissy and said (in my quiet low slow speaking voice), "oh my goodness, do you know who is coloring across the table?" she said nothing, i think she was stunned. again, i said to her, "look, santa is coloring, can you believe it?" she kinda gave a smile. but this girl can keep her composure and not show a sign of interest if she needs to. i started feeling bad for santa, so i smiled at him and then he asked sister bear, "have you been a good girl this year?" she looked up and said, "yes!" oh my, we made a connection! not really she just kept coloring and that was enough of that. she had better things to do than to color with santa. so he got up and left, this one's playing hard to get.....
later in the day, because we were there ALL day... we came back to visit santa and low and behold, the little santa was in the big chair, so i thought lets go for it. these photos are free, what do i have to lose, but to get a silly old photo of sister bear and santa. i had him hold brother bear first and that went smoothly.. sister bear wanted nothing to do with santa, so i stood next to him with brother bear in my arms and said, "come on, just stand next to mama, you don't even have to touch santa. this poor santa must have thought, "what did i do?" so we snapped the photo and the look on both sister bear and santa's face is priceless........ i'll add it here, give me a day or so. it's worth it to come back for it.
afterwards, we went back and did some more coloring and wrote our letters to santa (i am hoping his secretary reads them and thinks of sister bear as an adorable 3 year old and not the santa snob that she really is.) we'll leave him cookies nonetheless. she had no problem delivering the letters to his mailbox as you'll notice the photo at the top!
so much for trying. i'm not giving up, we still have to wear our christmas best and go take the real santa photo. we'll see how that turns out. wish me luck!
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