Pump It Up is SCARY.

January 05, 2015

Who knew?

I thought I might do a nice thing for Lauren who has been laid up on bed rest as she is having a difficult pregnancy and take her kiddos off her hands. I figured I would invite them to join us on a fun trip to Pump it Up to see Santa. We go every year and it's pretty awesome.

Now I do believe that Lauren may have mentioned in passing that her kids were afraid of Santa, but she must not have gone into too much detail because I confidently walked towards the building thinking things were going to be great.

Until Asher got to the door and saw inside.

He totally lost it. Apparently he could see Santa all the way from outside, and Santa had even brought a helper, Rudolf, his favorite reindeer. Asher looked TERRIFIED. He started screaming and shaking and sobbing. This set off a chain reaction to his little sister, who quickly became equally paralyzed with fear.

I did my best to coax them into the establishment, they made a run for the bench by the wall and sat, clinging to me, very upset.

I worked on talking Asher off the bench. He could see all the kids playing and I could tell that he wanted to overcome this fear and move on to the fun.

Santa actually plays with you!

Asher totally broke past his fear and had the best time!

They had a big snow ball fight with Santa too!

This guy, the reindeer. This was the real problem. Asher would get very worried if he came anywhere near him. He was happy and relaxed when Rudolf left the room though.

My kids loved them both, of course.

It was so nice to see Asher having fun!! His sister remained locked to my arm the entire time, shaking in fear. She was able to happily talk about Santa, but wanted him nowhere near her. And we won't even get started on that reindeer.

After the playing was over we went next door to sit on Santa's lap and have cookies. Too bad Ava's face was beet red from playing, it never calmed down until much later too.

Happy girls.

Ava asked for ballet clothes, a fashion kit and My Little Pony Pops. I can't remember what Norah asked for, she never had much of a list. She mentioned wanting walkie-talkies once, but not to Santa.