The family locked in the date about 2 months before and when the day came I was peeing my pants on anticipation. I am not sure how excited the kids were but they must have been because I know I was.
We left early-ish and jumped on a train. It’s weird how much you love trains when you are a kid and the older you get the more they frustrate you and the less you can tolerate the endless stopping at stations, the muffled music coming from the person behind you and the idiot on the mobile that talks to his mum the whole way. Kid X loves the train especially when you pull into a busy station, she'll learn the truth, she'll learn.
Our first important decision was whether to go straight to see Santa or go to the leading retailer Christmas windows. We looked at the queue we thought it would be smart to head straight to see Santa. We were wrong, the windows queue was small but the queue for Santa was very very long.
We raced up to see Santa and grabbed our spot in the very long queue, of course Kid X then needed to go to the toilet, and of course the only toilet we could find were staff toilets, and then of course we could only find a toilet the level below, and finally of course we found the toilets right near the Santa village on the way out.
Luckily I was able to hold the possie in the queue whilst Wife A went on the trek to the toot. They came back and we progressed to the second queue. Then we slowly made our way to the 3rd queue and after 35 impatient minutes we finally meet the man in the red suit.
Boy was he (name withheld for the purposes of kids) cranky, he begrudgingly asked Kid X what she wanted to referred to Ernie as the baby. He didn’t smile for the photo and was quick to move them on, however that’s when I was very proud of Kid X, she stopped walked up to him and said "Ernie would like a robot for Christmas". She had realised that he had not asked Ernie the vital question what would he like for Christmas. How amazing was that?
When we left we paid our 50 bucks for a non smiling him photo pack, then we went out to the windows and the queue was far to long so we went to lunch instead… Huuummmph
Chubba and Bucky wish all our Tacklenappy readers and supporters all the very merriest Christmas of all. We hope you enjoy the day with your family.