You Better Watch Out, You Better Not Cry, You Better Not Try to Visit Santa

We're all ready for Christmas here. The house is decorated, the presents wrapped, the kids excited. We tried to take the girls to see Santa yesterday.

That was a mistake.

We knew the mall would be busy, but we figured going at 4:00 would be tolerable. We were wrong. The place was already packed. The line to see Santa went past the queue and into the mall corridor. The people past the end of the queue were going to be left out until 6:00, since that was when Santa would get back from his dinner break.

We bagged it.

We took the girls to pick something out for themselves from the Disney Store instead. All told, we spent the same amount of money that we would have at Santa. The worst was yet to come, though. We hurried out to our van in the blustery cold. We had parked on the top level of the garage because we knew we'd be able to find a spot there. That was a mistake. Halfway down to the next level, we hit a jam. Every aisle of the garage was filled with people trying to leave. Most people were nice enough to shuffle fellow cars in fairly, though a few people were jerks about it. The biggest problem was the exit from the garage dumped out onto a street that connected to the main drag. The traffic light on that street was really short, so not only did we have multiple exits from the garage dumping out on the same street, but the light would only let a few cars off the street at a time.

It took us a full hour to leave the garage.

We decided not to head to the temple to see the Christmas lights like we had planned. Next year we'll plan a little better.

As for the holiday, our spirits still aren't dampened. We love Christmas in the Hawks home. I hope you have a Merry Christmas!