I'm surprised Santa's not in camo!

That is a direct quote from my friends husband after we told them we had just taken Gavin to see Santa Clause at Bass Pro! For those of you who know the story from last year, it may come as a surprise that I was willing to make the trip to Bass Pro again this year. If you don't know the story, let's just say that I was one of "those" moms and demanded to see the manager when we were denied access to Santa because they had too many kids already. I'm ashamed to admit there were tears and I declared a ban on all things Bass Pro! And I stuck to my guns for a year - I know it's shocking, but I was actually able to not buy A SINGLE THING at Bass Pro this past year! But, the siren call of their Santa Clause got to me again this year. Last year I shopped the Santa set-ups at all the local malls and non-malls and their boring display of solid green velvet backdrops and that was how I came to decide on Bass Pro. So once again this year, I knew that we had to visit Santa at Bass Pro and I knew we could not be lazy about it this year - this year we had to plan. So Saturday morning, we set the alarm and were out of the house by 9:45 am (Santa arrived at 10am) and arrived at Bass Pro at 10:15 am. Not knowing what to expect, I practically ran (ok, I did run) to make sure we were one of the lucky ones to get a "pro pass" this year. I left Jon and Gavin in the dust and cursed a few customers who were leisurely making their way through the aisles - c'mon people, MOVE! Breathless, I ran up to one of the elves to get our pro pass and SCORE - we got an 11 am time slot! Yippy, but who knew that a trip to Santa would cause such stress. Gavin was great and when the big guy asked him what he wanted for Christmas, Gavin answered without hesitation "a Vacuum". Santa said he'd see what he could do. In his usual form, Gavin did not once crack a smile in Santa's presence, but did say "he had fun" in the car on the way home!
Seriously, how cute is their display? Gavin thinks so too, he's just not one to show every emotion on his face.

We're frantically getting ready for Christmas as we start this weekend with Jon's family. I am happy to say we are shopped, wrapped and bowed as of last night! Don't think we will have time to get to any baking this year but we'll see how things go this week. We leave for Michigan on Tuesday and we're just hoping that we don't have a 3 hour ice delay this year! We took some video of Gavin at swim tonight so I'll try to get that posted before we leave! If we miss seeing you this year, we want to wish you all a Merry Christmas! Thanks for sharing this journey with us!