Happy New Year!

I don't think I'm quite over the holidays just yet--last night I stayed up 'til about midnight, watching "Holiday Inn", and I hope to stay up late soon to watch "White Christmas" and "Meet Me In St. Louis!" I borrowed all three movies from my friend, Eileen, after we took our girls and a few other Girl Scout friends to see one of the local high schools' production of "White Christmas". It was super cool--they even had snow falling IN THE THEATER at the end of the play! Plus, Josie saw Santa Claus--for real--watching the play. During Intermission, we went to walk around in the lobby, and I saw my friend, Sheila, who used to be my boss at Super Saver. She said her son, Dillon, was in the play. She was talking to me about it, and Josie was kind of walking along with us, when Sheila (who was ushering that night) stopped and said, "Look, here's Santa Claus!" and she grabbed this guy by the arm. Sure enough, it was him! He turned around, looked at Josie and smiled (his blue eyes twinkled) and asked her, "Have you been a good girl this year?" He might have said a couple more things, but Josie was trying to melt into me, she was so star-struck! (I'll admit, I was, too.) After that, we raced over to our friends and told them about the encounter. Once the play started up again, we saw that Santa was sitting in the front row. I saw my friend, Sheila, again, and she kind of whisper-shouted up to me, "Notice when he leaves, what kind of hat he's wearing." Well what do you think it was? Yup! A red elf hat with white fur trim. Josie wanted to go back and talk to him some more, since her friends had seen him too, and she'd regained her confidence. But I told her that, since it was only about two weeks before Christmas, it was probably his last night off for a while, and he'd probably appreciate a bit of space. He was just wanting to relax and be a "regular guy" for one night. She was a little perturbed, but Lindsay reinforced my comments when we got home.

A few days later, we had Eileen and her daughter, Eleanor, over to decorate cookies for Christmas. Turns out Eleanor had spotted Santa as they were leaving the play, and HE came up to HER and said, "I LOVE those chocolate chip cookies you leave me!" (Which, of course, is exactly the kind of cookies they leave for him--we leave frosted sugar cookies.) Eleanor and Josie had a great day swapping details of their encounters with Santa.

I told Eileen I'd love to see the movie version of "White Christmas," because I never had (I saw "Holiday Inn" years ago, but had forgotten most of it, and I only got 1/2 way through "St. Louis" this summer). She offered to bring over all three movies. But, of course, Christmas brought us a slew of new movies, so it's taken a while to get around to watching these. I was pleased with "Holiday Inn" and can't wait to watch the other two!