Christmas Party

Saturday was the date of the Christmas party at the park.  They had a gift exchange but we didn't participate in that since the motor home doesn't have any space to take on additional items.  Those who took part in the exchange seemed to have a good time so it worked out well for all of us.

Santa Claus stopped by and came in the back of a pickup truck rather than a sleigh, but that made more sense out here in the desert.  Sleighs don't function very well on the sand we have out here.  

There are a number of children in the park and most of them stopped by to see Santa and get their picture taken with him.  One elf had a list of who was naughty and who was nice and the look on the children's faces was priceless.  I don't like to publish pictures of children so I took some photos from a distance.

The little boy with dark hair in the photo below was so excited to see Santa that he could hardly sit still.  I think he was the first child to go up and talk to Santa.

 The young lady on Santa's lap had a big smile on her face and was surprised when the elf handed her a gift.

 Carl insisted on sitting on Santa's lap and was excited to find out he had been a good "boy" the past year.  Actually, it looks like they had to drag him up there and then hold him down.  He was a good sport about it.

After all the children visited Santa and the gift exchange was over they started taking pictures with Santa with whomever wanted one.  Ron K pushed us into getting our picture taken, but he chickened out and skipped the photo op.

The party was from 2-4 pm and once it was over we had to do some shopping in order to get ready for Christmas.  I thought it was going to be a $35 or so shopping trip, but it was about 3 times as expensive as that.   A dollar doesn't go very far nowdays.  We stopped at Panda Express on the way home and then unloaded all the stuff we bought and had to scramble to find storage space for it.

We brought the Christmas decorations out and Gerry put some up in the motor home.  We have more decorations to go up and hope to finish the task on Monday.  Pictures will be forthcoming.  When we had a house, decorating the house and tree was a 2 week affair.  Early on it took us a week to decorate the tree since we placed the old lead icicles about an inch apart on each branch.  Those days are long gone, but we did have a beautiful tree each year.

Gerry received some sad news today.  Her Aunt Mary passed away this morning after a brief illness.  She was 96 1/2 years old and was very active until the past year or so.  They are going to have a private service on Saturday.  It would be impossible for Gerry to make airplane connections so she will be unable to attend the service in Ohio.  Our thoughts will be there with the family.