The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far… A Trip To See Santa...

Our spur of the moment trip last year may be turning into more of a planned tradition. Last year, we planned a spontaneous trip to Frankenmuth as we backed out of Uncle Rob and Aunt Lynn’s driveway. This year, mommy wanted to take me there again because I am really enjoying seeing Christmas lights, decorated trees, etc. So, mommy, daddy and I took off early Sunday afternoon for our potentially new tradition to Frankenmuth the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

The trip would not go without some fun in the snow. I started seeing snow, well sort of when we left, but definitely once we got up to about Big Beaver Rd. I wasn’t worried though because I know that daddy has a little experience with driving in the snow. We gett up to Great Lakes Crossing and came to a stop in the road, though. It was snowing harder than it had been before. I could tell that the roads must be getting a slippery because daddy was slowing down a bit. We ended up seeing a truck on its side in the ditch. I got a good view of it because it was on my side of the road. Mommy and daddy talked about continuing because we were getting close to half where there (on a good day). Mommy really wanted to go and daddy said that he would do whatever she wanted because he had the next day off and could recover. So, daddy said that we would continue to go and we would just take our time. I stayed awake the whole way up there because I didn’t want to miss watching the snow. I’m not the best at counting yet, so I could only count 5 crashes, but I know there were quite a few more on the way there.

Finally, we made it to Frankenmuth. We stopped by the Santa desk right away to get me a name tag. Everyone needs to get a tag so that you can see Santa. My tagname was Nutcracker. We roamed around checking everything out. There was a dancing Santa that was big and pretty neat and I loved seeing all of the lights and stuff all over the place. I think mommy and daddy thought I was pretty funny pointing and grunting at everything I liked. I sure wished they would have let me out of the stroller because they wouldn’t always let me stay where I wanted or let me go where I wanted to.

Wouldn’t you know it; we were completely on the opposite end of this store when our nutcracker tag was called for Santa. So, we quickly made the trek over to the other end and waited in line for quite some time. I was okay with it for the most part because there were trains circling above. I loved it when daddy raised me up to get them, but I was never close enough to them to play with them myself. Right before it was my turn, I was getting really nervous about seeing Santa and decided I would try being fussy thinking that maybe I could get out it. Then, I was thrown behind a snowman and asked to find daddy. This was fun because I looked through this hole and there he was.

Whoosh!! Before I knew it, there was this guy called Santa. He looked familiar from last year, but for some reason, much scarier this year. So I was doing everything I could to stay away from him. He did try to bribe me with a present, but I was tired of waiting and just wanted to be done. It worked, but I still had to listen to him about being good and that he was watching me, etc. Mommy was holding me so I knew I was okay for now. After we left there, mommy and daddy said that it was okay to be afraid. They were both afraid of Santa Claus when they were little like me too.

After seeing Santa, we did some more shopping and then I got to run around a bit with daddy while mommy was in an ornament line. It was fun, but then it was time to go. The trip back hope was much slower than the drive up, so I decided to just go to sleep for the night…