Almost- pictureless visit with Santa

We have never taken our kids to meet Santa, until this year. Mostly because I never went as a little girl, so it wasn't something high on my priority list of all possible Christmas activities. Charlton, who did sit on Santa's lap as a child, remembers being scared when he was very young. This year, Rylan has been asking more questions about Santa, and when I heard about our hospital having a special breakfast with the big guy in red, I thought we could try. Rylan wanted to know all about Santa's reindeer and had a list of presents he was going to ask for. Caroline had been practicing her "Ho,ho,ho, Merry Christmases." I dressed both kids in their cute Christmas outfits and we headed out the door early on a Saturday morning.
The first clue that our morning might not turn out as we had hoped was the breakfast. Thawed out previously frozen fruit and....drumroll please... pancakes wrapped around sausage on a stick. Caroline was the only one excited about her breakfast, and I did catch a cute picture of her with my phone.
The 20-minute line went by faster than I had expected, and it was finally Rylan and Caroline's turn to sit on Santa's lap. Suddenly Rylan melted into a silent puddle of lead on the floor and wouldn't budge. Caroline clung to me like a baby monkey and the closer I walked to Santa, the tighter she held on to me! And it was all over just like that. Now, Caroline, whose previous greatest fear was car washes, says, "Santa scary!"
Well, there's always next year.

Here is the only picture I managed to take that morning. The kids wouldn't even cooperate and look at the camera at this point, so I just caught their backs as they admired this very pretty nativity scene in the hospital.