Santa Claus is coming to town.

One of these years, I am not going to wait until the last minute to get Robbie's Santa picture done. I think this is the closest to the wire I've come yet. While the parking lot of Penn Square Mall was packed, very few people seemed to be inside. I think it is busier on a Saturday in the middle of summer. I suspect people were in the theater. But I do have to admit, as soon as I saw the parking lot, I was thankful it was my dad that took us. With his handicap permit, it's so much easier finding parking. Horrid of me, I know, but dad got a kick out of it.

There was no line at Santa, surprisingly, so it didn't take long to get that over with. Robbie did well this year, unlike two years ago when I got the quintessential screaming baby photo that every parent must get at least once. BUT. We could NOT get him to smile. Not even once. He just sort sat there, whispering things to Santa whenever Santa would ask him a question, then got a goofy shy smile on his face. We got a sort of smirk once, but the rest of the photo wasn't that good, so I went with overall best out of nine photos.

Then we jumped over to a photo booth for our Christmas Photo Booth fun pictures. I started that tradition his first Christmas. He doesn't do much better when it comes to looking at the camera and not the screen. At least he doesn't do the bewildered, "Mom, what the hell are we doing in here???" face anymore. You can really see in the first photo of the series where his missing tooth is on the bottom front.

My only other business at the mall was to stop into Hot Topic for eye liner. I have yet to find a better black glitter eyeliner than the one they carry. So, I walked in with the intention of buying eyeliner and walked out not only with eyeliner, but almost $100 worth of stuff. It's been awhile since that's happened, mostly cause everything they carried for awhile now except for the make-up sucked. I can't tell you the last time I actually bought clothes in there. It's been YEARS. I ended up finding the perfect dress for my graduation. A strapless leopard print number that's not quite knee length and has a bit of a flair at the bottom. I'm ridiculously excited over excited over this dress. It's so ME. I also ended up buying Jack Skellington pajama pants, a Jack Skellington beanie, eye liner, eye shadow and a package of Nightmare Before Christmas hipster undies. I have a bit of a thing for Nightmare Before Christmas.

We ran over to Target after the mall, finally found Cars 2 on Blu-Ray for Robbie and bought it for him for Christmas, got him some new clothes from the Shawn White line that were on sale and some groceries. It's been a pretty busy day.

Tomorrow is my last day of work before surgery. It feels very bitter sweet. While I am ready for the pain and various types of discomfort to be over, there will be some people I will miss. I know I will be going nuts before my recovery time is done from not working for so long. But you've got to take the good with the bad, I suppose. Once it is time for me to go back to work, at least I'll never have to worry about being struck with pain at random times up there ever again.