December 16, 2022
I’m assuming this isn’t a huge surprise to anyone, but the Clark Fam Santa visit didn’t go super well.
Trekking out to Cabela’s for their awesome Santa experience is one of our favorite holiday traditions. We’ve been going since Logan was a baby, minus that one year the world shut down due to COVID. Every year seems to get a little more chaotic, and this year followed the trend.
So for starters, 2022 Santa’s Workshop began with us running late for our reservation. (Which I don’t think I need to even mention. OF COURSE we were running late… we are us.) We parked with two minutes to go until our time slot began.
That’s actually pretty early for us, so I was feeling like a total badass. But two minutes evaporate pretty quickly when you have three kids with selective hearing and an insistent need to feel independent. IYKYK.
So, with two minutes to go, Eric and I were going to divide and conquer. Logan had to go to the bathroom, so I started to run inside with the older two while he was getting Jude out of the car to meet us inside. Logan, Dane, and I literally had JUST made it to the sidewalk across the parking lot when I heard Eric yell, “OH MY GOD!!!!!” I stopped and turned around right away because I knew this particular type of “OH MY GOD!!!!” would require help. So we crossed the parking lot back to the van and found that Jude vomited all over his matching family Christmas jammies he had been wearing for our annoying, bougie Santa picture. Super neat. Before I became a parent, I heard that kids puke a lot, but like…. They puke A LOT. Coughed too hard? Puke. Took too big of a bite? Puke. Swallowed spit down the wrong tube? Puke. See someone puke? Puke. Anyways, I digress. I looked in the van to find a very smiley Jude in unrecoverable, puke-covered pajamas. Those two minutes were definitely goners.
To make the situation worse, apparently, I don’t carry extra kid clothes around with me anymore because that would just be way too convenient and responsible. So there we were, officially late for our reservation. Logan was about to wet her pants, and Jude and his matching family Christmas jammies were covered in vomit. Miraculously Dane was not causing any problems at the moment, so I will go ahead and call that a smashing success.
After assessing Jude and deciding that he was okay and just had a fluke throw-up session, we decided to try to still make it work. And then, Dejavu – I started to run inside with the older two while Eric was getting Jude out of the car to meet us inside. Once we were done in the bathroom, I rushed to find some Jude-sized Cabela’s clothes to replace the matching family Christmas jammies. I ran into Eric, who had already managed to find a super cute Christmas shirt for Jude – perfect! I asked him if he found pants, and he told me that Jude’s pajama pants were actually just fine and he didn’t need new ones. I should have questioned this obviously ridiculous and incorrect observation of his, but I didn’t. We made it all the way to the opposite side of the store to pay for the shirt when Eric said, “Oh wait… his pants have puke all over them.” And then I left to go have a drink at the nearest bar. Just kidding, but I wish I did. I actually left to go back to the opposite side of the store to find pants for the puke monster. The funny thing about the Cabela’s toddler clothes is that they have soooo many cute shirts and only one single pair of pants that is placed on a rack that is invisible to the naked eye. But I got it. I ran to the opposite side of that giant effing store again, purchased the clothes, brought Jude to the bathroom, and cleaned him up. I told Eric to get a headstart over toward Santa’s Workshop. Once I was finished cleaning Jude and dressing him in his not matching family Christmas jammies, I started heading over to meet up with Eric and realized, of course, that Santa’s Workshop was upstairs…and the stairs were all the way over on the opposite side of the store. We finally showed up and jumped in line, 12 minutes late for our reservation (which I don’t think is really all that bad for all that had transpired during our dumpster fire of an arrival).
It turns out the lady in front of us didn’t even need a reservation, so we probably didn’t need one, which means we also probably did not need to sprint around Cabela’s like a bunch of psychopaths trying to find clothes that didn’t have puke on them, but what fun would that have been, amirite?!
The rest of the visit was pretty unnoteworthy. The kids waited in line super impatiently, I was sweating profusely from running around that store like a mad woman, the kids met Santa very awkwardly and Dane didn’t speak, blink, or breathe the whole time. We got a picture of Logan and Dane wearing matching family Christmas jammies and Jude rocking a new Cabela’s outfit, then we wandered through the store and looked at all the super fun stuff that Cabela’s has to offer.
If you visited or plan to visit Santa this year, I hope things went or will go smoothly for you. If not, just think to yourself, “At least my kid didn’t smell like puke while meeting the jolly old man.” And if your kid DID, in fact, smell like puke while meeting Santa, then let’s be friends.