Growing up with Santa

Dec 19, 2011

No mat­ter how old Santa’s grand­kids are they’re never too old to have a photo taken with Santa. This year, Laren (SIL) and Terri my old­est daugh­ter went to Beau­mont for Thanks­giv­ing. This meant they were able to get their photo taken with Santa. It’s been sev­eral years since they’ve been able to make it down for the hol­i­days and Mr. and Mrs. Claus were very happy to see them.

This photo is of Santa and my sis­ter Belinda’s kids… from left to right is my adorable nephew Brit­tain (poor boy he is the ONLY boy out of 6 grand­kids), Isabella, Paw Paw Santa, Made­lyn hold­ing Grand-Dog Zeus and niece Amanda. Believe it or not this photo was the first one they took! Talk about a Christ­mas mir­a­cle. Even Zeusy was good and looked at the camera.

I was so bummed we weren’t able to make it down this hol­i­day sea­son. Ans­ley was the only grand­kid that wasn’t able to get her photo taken with Santa. Work­ing at Hall­mark dur­ing the hol­i­days means no time off and lots of over­time. But I am count­ing down the days until mom and dad arrive Christ­mas day. It was such a won­der­ful sur­prise when they told me they were com­ing. This was going to be the first year in all my 46 years to not be with my mom and dad Christ­mas day. So glad this record is not going to be broken.

This year, dad started writ­ing down some of the mem­o­rable moments he has had as Santa’s helper, dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son. I thought it would be fun to share some of them with you this week and this one truly touches my heart.

One evening, a young lady in a wheel­chair about 5 years old comes down for a visit with Santa. When she gets about 10 feet away and hold­ing mom’s hand, she walks to Santa. This lit­tle girl has cere­bral palsy and the walk was quite dif­fi­cult but she was deter­mined to walk down for her visit. With a lit­tle bit of help from Santa she gets up on his lap and mom says, “She can’t smile for the pic­ture but that’s OK. The mus­cles in her face are start­ing to weaken.” Santa talks for a bit with the lit­tle girl and they pose for their pic­ture. Well, Santa tick­led her on the ribs and said, “CHEESE.” The lit­tle girl made such an effort that a grin appeared on her face, enough so that mom and dad’s face had a great big smile too. They were so happy as it was one of the best smiles she had made in a long time.  Well, as you can imag­ine this made Santa’s day. Moments like these are the kind that fills your heart with joy but tears come to your eyes when the child leaves out of sight.

I need to find a pub­lisher… the sto­ries Santa has are so won­der­ful and uplift­ing and I think it would make a won­der­ful lit­tle book. I’m going to put this on my list of things to do.

Sweet­est of hol­i­day Hugs!