North Park Mall

A trip to the mall has become a major excursion nowadays, and most of the time it is a lot more trouble than it's worth.  But as a person who goes stir crazy after staying home with three kids for more than about 24 hours, I had my fill yesterday, so today we ventured to NorthPark Mall.  I'm not much of a "mall" person, and I'm definitely not much of a shopper, but North Park is special because it's the mall that I used to go to as a kid.  And while it's changed A LOT, it's also very much the same.

There's still the big fountain where kids drape themselves over the concrete rim.  There's always that one kid whose parents either don't care or aren't watching who runs around the rim and with the slightest misstep could fall face first into the fountain.  When I was little, I think the fountain used to have lights in it that made it change colors, and I thought it would shoot water really high sometimes, but it doesn't do those things any more.  Maybe it just seemed bigger because I was little?

Anyway, there's the fountain.  And there's Scrooge, who is a puppet that leans out of the window at the top of his house jarring and joking with his adoring fans every hour during the holidays.  But most importantly, there's Santa.  Otherwise known as "THE REAL SANTA."  He's the Santa that's been at North Park for more than 20 years.  He has his PhD in Counseling.  According to Pla Shee's explanation today, the other Santas (the ones at other malls, the one that came to his school, etc.) report to this main Santa, who comes to North Park during the day to meet with children, and flies back to the North Pole in the evenings to get his sleigh ready for Christmas.

Needless to say, we were looking forward to putting in a good word to Santa today.  Unfortunately we were not the only family to have this brilliant idea.  When we got to Santa's photo studio at the mall at 12:30, we were told that our assigned time to have our moment with THE REAL SANTA would be 8:30 this evening. 

Umm...no.  On to Plan B.  Plan B=Take a handful of pennies, close your eyes, think of all of your Christmas wishes, and chuck the pennies in the big fountain.  Legend has it that Santa gets the message that way, too.  :)