Parent Win

When we first made plans for Collin & I to come spend Thanksgiving weekend in Big Bear with Jacob & his daughters, I obsessively scoured the Internet for activities we could do with the kids. Preferably something so full of holiday cheer, we'd all fall asleep that day with visions of sugar plums.

Big Bear is a small town, so I wasn't sure how my luck would pan out...until I saw that they had AN ANNUAL TREE LIGHTING CEREMONY WITH SANTA AND MRS CLAUS! BOTH of them!!! Even better, it was held in The Village, which is a super cute part of town lined with small shops and artisan displays. The Village is hands down, my favorite part of Big Bear.

Jacob & I created a master plan in no time. We'd load the kids up after dinner, make a pit stop at Starbucks for hot chocolate & cake pops & then drive down to The Village to watch the ceremony & see Santa.

Only....it didn't pan out that way.

Instead, we fell behind on dinner because the kitchen in this cabin...well, it's a whopper, lemme tell ya. Observe:

After we finagled dinner out of the kitchen, the ceremony was over. But we knew Santa & Mrs. Claus would still be there & the tree would still be lit up; looking gorgeous. So, we dressed the kids in warm coats & hats, loaded them into the car & headed to our first stop: Starbucks...for our grand plan of cake pops & hot chocolate, you know.

Only....Starbucks was out of cake pops....& whoopie pies....& hot sleeves....& venti sized cups....& peppermint flavor. No. This isn't a joke. They were out of everything. We were sad, yes, but shrugged it off. What else could we do? First world problems, yo! We got the kids their hot chocolate...Collin chocolate milk (did you know they put whipped cream & chocolate syrup on top?!?!?) & headed to The Village for the festivities.

Jacob parked in front of a candy shoppe & we decided since the cake pops were an epic fail, we would let the kids pick out something from the shop. $25 later, we walked out of the store with a giant lollipop, two sugar filled tubes, a Mario PEZ & a feather lollipop. It was so worth it to see the gleam in their eyes when we told them they could pick out what they wanted.

After we forced them all to stand in front of the tree so we could have our pictures, we saw Santa. Well, MJ & Andi did. Collin cried & screamed & had to wait with Cub Cub out side. I am so not getting a Santa picture out of him this year. We could barely hear the girls tell Santa what they wanted over Collin's curdled screams.

This afternoon, when I gave Andi permission to open her lollipop, we had one happy camper. I mean....HAPPY. Who knew a $4 sucker could get this much happy out of one little girl?