The boys and Santa

We took another shot at a Santa visit today with a similar outcome.  Vake was very excited about the whole program and was actually pretty thrilled to walk up to Santa and ask him for Den and Dart.  For those of you who don't know who Den and Dart are, they are two minor characters in the Thomas the Tank Engine pantheon.

Here's what the internet has to say about Den and Dart: Dart works at the Vicarstown Dieselworks to support and assist Den. Den and Dart have worked together for so long that Dart can often guess what Den is thinking before he can get it out himself. Although not so much the thinker of the duo, he is usually the doer and can be the chattier of the two. He quickly buzzes about the Dieselworks, occasionally bashing, crashing, and clanging into things. He can be heard to grumble "Dizzy Diesels!" when something goes wrong. Dart is very able in his work and a valuable team player. Despite being small in size, he is feisty and fast. Dart also like jokes, sometimes to the annoyance of the other Diesels. If feeling bothered, particularly by the steam engines, Dart is far from devious, but can get grumpy, gruff, irritable, and sometimes cheeky too, but otherwise he is the quick-witted assistant of the Dieselworks.

But I digress.  Probably just because we spend hours a day doing imaginary play with the characters from Sodor.  Whew.

Anyway, each year the Mullens invite us to the Commonwealth Club for the Santa breakfast.  It is really, really nice- the food is fancy and they have jugglers and balloon animal makers and it is a lovely, lovely environment.  They have a Santa, and they take pictures, the whole "visit with Santa" experience.  It went as badly for Gil today as it did last week.  Which is surprising, because Gil is generally so mild mannered.

The rest of the day was quiet around here.  I have a couple of loads of laundry to finish, and I tried to clean out the boys' playroom- which by the way- I will be painting in the new year- finally giving up on the hot pink....