It's Not A Party Until Everyone Sits On Santa's Lap

It's that time of year when parties happen every time you blink. It can be fun, if not a little exhausting. Sometimes you have to pick and choose what you attend, so as not to spread yourself too thin. So we had our first party of the season over the weekend, getting together with extended family for a celebration and time of catch-up on everyone's lives. 

This party has a guest appearance by Santa every year (they book early to make sure he's available, you know). Santa generously hands out a gift to each kid in attendance. This gift may or may not come from parents who fill Santa's sack on the sly. Except my kids kinda figures this sly trick out a year or five ago, and the teens are now to the age when they're all, "we're just too big for this kind of thing." They've not said it, mind you, but they've thought it. Being a mom, I am a mind reader. 

So this year, we had some extras with us at the Christmas party. Our nephew attended with us, and Becky's boyfriend thought he'd love to meet some extended family. The Way Things Worked was explained to them, and the nephew was all quick to say out loud, "I'm not sitting on Santa's lap."

You know that was reason enough for me to get gifts to supply for Santa, right? I mean, if you wave a red flag at a bull, it's going to charge.

So I purchased and wrapped, and we took ourselves to the party. And we parties over the weekend, catching up and having a good time with family right up until Santa arrived. When Santa arrives, the party stops, of course. The Man In The Red Suit takes top billing wherever he goes. Santa called names out for quite a while, because the extended family is large. And then Josh's name was called, and The Boyfriend laughed. I said it was all because The Nephew declared he wasn't going to sit on Santa's lap, so of course I had to go there. The Boyfriend agreed. It was funny.

And then The Boyfriend had to go sit with Santa. Because nobody is left out when Santa hands out gifts. He has a sense of humor, which is why he fits right in with us here, but we were all rolling at the look on his face when his name was called. We figure, as parents, we have the right to embarrass kids on occasion - even in public - if they're going to show up at our house and eat our food more often than not through the week. 

This would be The Nephew, pretending not to be mortified.