The Phillips' Guide to Fine Dining

Living in a metropolitan area, we are surrounded by great dining establishments; some of which happen to be within walking distance of casa de phillips. On Saturday we chose to bypass such fine eateries and instead opted to have our breakfast in a fire station and our lunch outside a car dealership. We are a classy bunch.

Friday night when I finally found a moment to sit down, I decided to read our local paper (which we somehow get on an infrequent and free basis). The front page was devoted to an upcoming Breakfast with Santa at our local fire station. The next morning we loaded everyone up and set out for a fine meal of (free) pancakes and some Christmas festivities.

Evelyn enjoyed people-watching and Isaac was thrilled over the idea of eating pancakes while 20 feet from an actual firetruck. Santa arrived in a fleet of helicopters, accompanied by Mrs. Claus (or "that girl Santa" as Isaac has taken to calling her), Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph, and a slew of Elves (one who happened to give Evelyn a large piece of chocolate when I wasn't looking....fortunately I noticed and was able to snatch it away. Nothing ruins Breakfast with Santa like your six month old choking on Christmas candy.). We opted not to wait in the terribly long and unorganized line to sit on Santa's lap, but rather were the obnoxious parents who had him pose with Isaac in the parking lot.

Looking for the Helicopter

Random assortment of Christmas characters

Your fire station doesn't have a bag pipe/ drum band?Although we snapped quite a few pictures of our little family dining in a fire station, we did not feel the need to capture our impromptu picnic at the car dealership on film. The Phillips station wagon needed a tune-up and some new tires, so we dropped it off to be worked on. The dealership just happened to be grilling hamburgers and hot dogs for any and all customers and we are not ones to pass up free food. I told Tobe that we need to find some random church bizarre to have supper at that evening to round out our day of free dining, but we chose to eat the leftovers in the fridge instead.

If you have been reading this blog for a while now, you might have recalled me stating that I would not attempt the mall Santa because 1. He tends to be creepy and 2. It is ridiculously expensive ($17 for one 5x7 picture that doesn't even come in a paper frame....really?). Today the children and I happened to be shopping at our local mall for new tennis shoes for Isaac (his fit fine on Friday and were much too tight yesterday) when we passed Santa. There was no line and Santa was just hanging out in his big brown recliner. Isaac decided that he did want to speak to the man in red, which he did quite shyly and hesitantly. I decided since both children were being cooperative we would take a few pictures and see how they turn out. The photographer did a mediocre job of barely jingling some bells in an attempt to get smiles from the kids will she managed to hit her camera button a few times. Apparently the task of photographing Santa and children repeatedly has sucked the Christmas joy right out of her. The picture isn't great, but I now have documented proof that Isaac and Evelyn visited an official Santa this year. One day when they attempt to blame their teenage angst on the fact that we never took them to anything fun, I can whip out these pictures and prove that fun was indeed had at casa de phillips.

Finally, because I am the sentimental type, here is a picture of Isaac and Tobe on Saturday and one of the two of them on Isaac's first Christmas two years ago. These pictures melt this Mommy's heart every time I look at them.