Skip to main content

The next time you're in line to see Santa Claus

Ah, Christmastime!
My family has many traditions during Christmas. When our son was born, we were excited to add a new one--taking a picture with Santa Claus. We waited until he was 5 years old for his first photo with jolly old St Nick. We wanted him to be aware what was going on. We had seen too many babies bursting into tears as their mothers handed them off to a large, bearded stranger dressed in red.
The Christmas our son turned 5, we dashed down to the Boulevard Mall in Las Vegas after picking him up from kindergarten. We stood in the long line with all of the other parents and children. As we edged closer to the front of the line, my husband removed our son's jacket. To his horror, our son's shirt was stained from top to bottom. Obviously, he enjoyed his lunch so much he decided to wear half of it.
"Can you believe this?" my husband lamented.
"Yes," I said with a deadpan look. "He's five, that's what five year old's do. They are messy eaters!"
"He can't have his picture taken like this! Listen, we have someone ahead of us. If I hurry, I can run over to one of the stores here and buy him another shirt."
I looked down at our son and noticed that he was wearing a long sleeved plain navy t-shirt. The collar was the same in the front as well as in the back. An idea suddenly hit me.
"We don't have to buy a new shirt, let's do this," I offered, drawing our son closer. I quickly slipped off his shirt, turned it around and put it back on. Now, the clean side of his shirt was picture ready--the dry stained riddled side was hidden behind him.
My husband looked at him and said, "I guess that's okay, but he's still wearing his shirt backwards."
"No one can tell!" I countered, as the "elf" walked our son over to Santa.
The picture shows him siting on Santa's lap with a big smile and a clean appearing shirt. The Santa picture was saved!
A new Christmas tradition was born with one caveat--Santa pictures had to be taken well before lunch!





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

"B"lathering about soap

I have noticed lately I have picked up a new interest: hand made soaps. There are two incidences that introduced me to this world. The first incidence was perusing YouTube and stopping at a thumbnail of a soap maker's reaction video. I clicked on it and enjoyed the humorous take of the soap maker. She was down to earth, spunky and informative at the same time. Then I clicked on her channel and was intrigued by the vibrant colors and decadent designs. It was a mix of being soothing and fun.  The second incident was a feed from a soap company that was on my Facebook page.  Their glorious photograph of a swirling black raspberry hand made soap defied what I thought soap could be. If I didn't know any better, I would have sworn it was a dessert. My mother would at times describe colors as being yummy and this soap fit it to a T.  What is it about this mundane item like a soap bar?   I wonder if it has to do with seeing all of the news about the importance of hand washing that has

How's the haircut?

Isn't it amazing how a bad memory can stick to you like a wad of gum in your hair? You try to remove it, but in order to do that, you need to cut off some of your hair? At first, you’re apprehensive, but in the process, you end up with a nice hair style? At the beginning of my career, I was working at an apartment complex.  I must have upset my boss by interrupting him when he spoke to me.  I hadn't realized I was in a bad habit of talking over him. I was so anxious to prove I was on top of all the assignments, but in this process, wouldn't let him get a word in edgewise. One day, he held up an eyeglass case and said this signified when it was his time to talk. In front of the other staff, he actually held up the case while he spoke to me. I was embarrassed by his demeaning ways. I didn't put any credence in his opinion. I wrote him off as being a mean old man! For a while, I carried this memory like a wad of hardened gum in my hair. It was brittle and would have

Only one day for love?!

Last week at my Toastmasters club meeting, we ran out of time for Table Topics. This segment of the meeting is when a club member is assigned to give the other members questions so they can give an impromptu 1-2 speech on that topic. Typically, the questions are related to the theme of the meeting.  Naturally, the theme of the meeting was Valentine’s Day. It was offered that next week these Table Topics could be used. Then it was shared that may not be a good idea, since the questions related to romance and “lovey dovey” stuff. I said “It shouldn't matter if we do this next week. Do we only have one day that we can talk about love?!” I have been thinking about this the day after Valentine’s. How much emphasis is focused on this day that it has to be super romantic? What about the people without partners? Isn't it cruel to exclude them from a basic feeling such as love? Also, as I grow older, I’m not a huge fan of all of the paraphernalia that is sold during this day. Sure,