Cherrydale Santa

Santa sure knows how to make an entrance around these parts. Having missed our usual Santa meeting at our realtor's office, we headed to the volunteer fire department in our neighborhood to catch a peek of the fat man there. He arrived to much fanfare on an antique fire truck. Unfortunately, this is the best photo I have of Ed and the kids hailing his arrival and then him stuck in traffic. After that, my camera died because I failed to charge the battery. For the record, this has never happened before with my Canon D20. That battery lasts forever!

As it turns out, after children sit on Santa's lap and request "lego trains" and "a baby nursery", they get to rifle through a huge pile of gifts and take one home.

Connor chose an electric train.

Helen is nothing, if not clever. I had feared she would bring home another plastic headed baby doll - and she was certainly interested in these. But then she noticed a freakin' pink and purple plastic "laptop" and she knew that the only way she would ever get one of these electronic nightmares was as a gift from Santa. So, like all good politicians, she seized the moment, as I stood there crooning about how cute the plastic headed babies were.

Game. Set. Match. Score 1 for the fatman and Helen.

Helen doesn't play with the toy that often, as she seems to know if it makes me nutty it might have an unfortunate accident and disappear. But she does enjoy saying things like "Daddy, isn't it nice that now EVERYONE in the house has a laptop. Well, except Connor." and "Potter needs to have a playdate with me because he really, really, really wants to see my music computer. He will love it." It wouldn't actually be that bad, except Connor has been able to read the instructions for her so between the two of them, they can make several games appear.

Ugh.

Double Ugh.

Elaine