Stalking the most festive of prey.

Last weekend we stood in the rather chilly weather to take in the Santa Claus parade and it was a blast. It was, however, cold enough to freeze hot chocolate into a brown puck. This weekend I upped the ante and had me a Christmas crazy weekend.

I spent the bulk of my Saturday taking pictures of Santa and kids at a Christmas party (woohoo....a paying gig!) and had a blast. It's a little daunting taking almost three hundred pictures of kids with Santa in three hours. You read that right. I basically had less than a minute with each kid as I had to crank through nearly 100/hour. It was a challenge but fun and watching the kids interact with Santa was priceless. I witnessed everything from the wide eyed wonder of the little ones to the feigned disinterest of the older kids, who were quite happy to be there once they got on his knee. Even the criers, which were actually quite few, were all part of the entertaining parade of kids that we got through (you can check out the highlights here. I talked to Santa while I was there and he wasn't quite sure that you'd all been good this year though.

With that out of the way and then a hockey game that night I was exhausted. Sunday we got off to a rather slow start but made sure that it was officially Christmastime around our house. As if the piles of stuff yet to wrap and the overexcited children weren't enough of an indicator for us, we went and did the inevitable hunting of the tree this weekend. Piling the kids and the sister in law in the minivan we hauled ourselves off to a local Christmas tree farm and wandered through the dwindling stocks of trees to be captured. I've never hunted them in pairs before but it went a lot more smoothly than two years ago so I must be getting better at it.

The kids seemed to enjoy it too and now that they are getting bigger I can put them to work as well. Once they marked the kill I set about delivering the lethal blow. My daughter wasn't impressed with dragging three out of the filed but once I told her Santa wouldn't leave gifts under the piano she got to work.

With the green monsters securely tethered to the top of our ride it was time to go for victory munchies on the trip home. The poor unsuspecting tree is standing in our living room awaiting the final insult for it is to be adorned with all manner of lights and glittery things soon enough. So overdone and shiny it will look a bit like a tree-vestite. I shall post it's shame on the internet for all to see once we get done with it.