walking bust, but fun

I spent the morning doing laundry, then walked the dog. Came home did class and it was time to start my "mom" duties for the day. One was to take the teen to her Girl Scout service project, shopping for a homeless family. She's always stuck babysitting for her little brother so I had a plan. And it was a surprise. Bring him along. We'd go see Santa while she's shopping.

We dropped her off at the jewelry department in Walmart in Easton, and then went for gas. He didn't know what the surprise was.

We went to the Z Arch Barn Farm, right down the street from Kleins Dairy Farm (great cheese and ice cream). It was actually a Facebook post by Klein's that told me about it. They have real reindeer. That's what sold me. And Santa. And Christmas trees. They call the winter program Santa's Pit Stop.

As we approach and pass past and I tell Lydia that the chickens and turkeys run all over the place. They are really free range. You have to be careful about hitting them. But they built this new roadside stand to prevent that. As we go past the roadstand the child asks if they have turkey's where we are going. He doesn't like turkeys. They nip. I told him they definitely had no fowl.

As we approach the farm he sees the rows of trees and says "Are we going to see reindeer?" We almost made it.

The farm was packed. The cars kept rolling in. We finally found a place to park. I'm not sure it was quite legal. The trees were really nice. If I was allowed to have a tree, I might have bought one. There were places to take the kids pictures.  The child sees the cut trees, the nutcrackers and the barn and say "Santa too?" He's eight. Way past the age most kids like Santa. Clearly the oldest one there not dragging a younger sibling.

We took some pictures and then went to see the reindeer. We got a fun fact sheet about reindeer. He read the whole thing. He'll pass the quiz. They had five out. "Three are missing"? I gave him some BS about training for the big flight. Two were white, two brown, and a brown yearling with tiny antlers.

The barn is new. It's beautiful. Still constructed traditionally. We were greeted by the nutcrackers standing guard.

There was a station for the kids to write letters to Santa and a box to mail them. Then he got in a short line for Santa. Dan's had it set up so parents couldn't take a good picture. (I tried going up to the loft, but they had that blocked with crafter's tables!) Plus they've changed it that the digital download is part of one of the packages. That's what I used to buy. They probably were not making enough money. The child talked his ear off. The line grew.

Here he is coming out of Santa land. He loved his silly hat. Lydia assembled it for him.

We had some time before we had to pick up the teen, so we watched a VHS of Mickey Mouses Christmas Carol and Nutcracker Suite.  Thank goodness Aunt Pat is a pack rat.