It’s 1:30pm and we are headed out the door and on our way to the Grove. Today is the day Liam gets to meet Santa for the first time. I am excited and curious. Excited because it’s Santa. And Curious to see how Liam will react, how the Grove is going to do the “santa Thing”, and how long we have to wait.
Tim did some research prior to us leaving the house. Reviews said don’t even try meeting Santa after 5:30pm, because the wait is 3 hours plus, and you may not even get to see Santa. So we made sure we were out the door well before then.
As soon as we get to the Grove we went straight to the rooftop to park (parking was madness!). We head over to Santa’s cottage. I have to say, it is quite the spectacular Christmas experience. Lights, decorations, fake snow, Christmas music blaring, elves, and thousands of people. It was like a ritzy packed amusement park, like the ones Tim REALLY loves(not).. From a distance we see that there are about 3 people in line. HOLY MOLY!!! Did NOT see that happening, the Christmas spirits have blessed us!! Tim and I had a smile from ear to ear. This, was gonna be MAGICAL!
But that “magical” feeling evaporated quicker than snow in July when we noticed a little sign that said “take a number.” Our lucky number was 204. Not bad right? It made sense.. This was the Grove right? Lots of people, and they ALL want to see Santa.. Well, they were on 70.
Damn! So I asked the (freakishly authentic) girl elf at the front of the line about the wait. She said, “the line is tricky, it can go quickly or pathetically slow, I have a good feeling though; come back at 5:30.” Sure enough, that was 3 and 1/2 hours later. Tim’s eyes blinked a couple times, then glazed over but he said nothing. I knew he was overjoyed.
Ugh!! To good to be true. I convinced Tim to stay until then. To kill time, we went off and had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory then did a bit of shopping after. Our last stop was Nordstroms.
After waiting close to 4 hours, in organized chaos and Christmas music, we walked back to Santa’s cottage with our Christmas spirit slowly returning with each step..
Finally, it was Liam’s BIG moment!! Thats when the bomb drops..the (freakishly authentic) girl elf has the nerve to tell us that Santa is going on break. That’s when Tim’s eyes get big and both of us were….”ummm what?!” She goes on to say “the lucky number is 201″….we were #204. Son of a B%#@!!! She goes on to say “Santa has to break from 6:00-6:30, you will have to come back after that.” It was 5:40. I had somehow managed to keep Tim in this place for almost 4 hours and to make him wait another hour was way beyond my skill.
Oh boy, I saw Tim’s face and he wasn’t happy. Mostly in shock…he had no words(thank god). I was so bummed! BUT, then the (freakishly authentic) girl elf see’s the rising anger disguised as disappointment in our faces and tells us that she “maaay” be able to get us in.
I think it had something to do with Tim being a really good samaritan that evening. He found a money clip with credit cards and $700 in cash just sitting on a chair in Nordstroms. Tim saw it, picked it up, counted it, showed me and then handed it to the salesperson. Don’t know what happened after that, hopefully the salesperson continued the karma! We didn’t stick around, Santa was waiting!! In Tim’s words- “Your Welcome”.
Waiting at the Cheesecake Factory
Liam can scratched this off his bucket list…being bottle fed at Nordstroms.
Apparently Liam didn’t make it on Santa’s list. Oh well, maybe next year! lol
Ta Daaaa!!!
Santa and Liam 2012
The Mitchell Adventures 