How was your weekend?

Drew got off of work early on Friday, so off we went to Northpark Mall to get Ace's pictures taken with Santa. Ace says "only suckas ride in strollers" so he insisted on pushing it himself, which caused a tiny bit of ruckus every time someone dared step in front of him. He almost deadlegged a guy once, and I said "Look out, Ace!" A couple minutes later, a guy had to hop a little to avoid stroller burn and Ace hollered "LOOK OUT!" That was my first embarrassment of the day.

It took a long, long, long time, but we finally made it to Santa's headquarters. After about a 10 minute wait in line, we got the following adorable pictures:






























Now, I'm not so narcissistic as to believe that everyone remembers Ace after meeting him once. I think he's pretty freakin' cool, but to many other people, he's just another kid. After giving my son a good long stare, Santa said "What's his name?" I told him, and he said "THIS is Ace? He's gotten so big! Where's his hair?"

I hope I didn't look stupid, but my mouth straight up fell open and I said "Of thousands of children you see every year, you remember my son?"

"Yeah," said Santa. "From Marshall's blog."

Yes, Santa Claus, the one and only, is a fan of our local paper's editorial cartoonist. I posted a link in Marshall's comments last year to the picture on my blog, and Santa saw it.

While we were in the food court, Ace kept begging to ride on the school bus, one of those ride-on toys for kids that are filled with unholy germs. I asked Drew to find out how much the rides were and he marched right on up and started investigating. Why was this a problem? There was a little girl already in it, and where we were sitting, her parents wouldn't have been able to see us. "Baby, you look like a huge creep right now. Just come on back."

After Ace finished inhaling his Chick Fil-A ice cream, I scrounged up a few quarters and Purelled the hell out of this school bus and plopped Ace in it. The kid had a blast.




















It took a little fighting to get him off of it.

While he was playing on the school bus, the little girl came back and climbed on the nearby toddler-sized ice cream truck. Drew said "Ace, say 'hi' to the little girl." Ace misinterpreted and went full-on stud muffin, and said "How about a kiss?" Drew and I, naturally, high-fived.

We got home and despite our desperate prayers for a nap, Ace was all "y'all, I slept till 11:30, is that not enough for you???" and powered through the evening. We met Alice, Black Betty, and Roz at the Brandon Christmas parade.

While there, Ace discovered Mr. Rofarto... Rather, Mr. Rofarto's candy. Instead of taking advantage of the candy raining from the sky, Ace started begging Rofarto for those nasty Smarties thingies from a tube from the Dollar Tree. Rofarto was a good sport though, handing them over as quickly as Ace demanded them... till they ran out.



















Ace left Rofarto in his dust after that, off to find a new best friend.

After the parade, we went to join Doghouse and his family at the Mellow Mushroom, where a very giggly Black Betty and I acted a fool while our husbands discussed beers in the most manly way they knew how.

Saturday I went Christmas shopping and Sunday I moped around my house and slept. Awesome.

More pictures of our Friday shenanigans here.