Take THAT, Santa!

(Oops! I wasn't finished with this post the first time I hit "publish" - this is the REAL one, in case you caught a glimpse of it before!)

Last year for Christmas, the girls both asked Santa for a hair salon that they'd seen on TV. Well, Santa hemmed and hawed, because quite honestly, the toy looked like a piece of JUNK. But the girls weren't asking Santa for anything else, despite the clever promptings of their clever mom.

So.

A week before Christmas, clueless about what to get the girls, Santa buckled and went to Toys-R-Us. Predictably, the only toy they wanted for Christmas was out of stock. Santa called nearly every Toys-R-Us in the state. You guessed it - NOTHING.

My cousin Alicia saved the day and went to her Toys-R-Us and guess what? They had it!

And the elves rejoiced.

She bought it and hauled the thing around in her trunk for me. However, she's in Dallas. I'm in Denver. With the exorbitant shipping costs to get it that distance in time for Christmas (because we were now just days away), Santa may as well have bought the girls a REAL hair salon complete with tuition to beauty school. It wasn't going to happen.

Thank you, Alicia, for going above and beyond the duties of cousinhood.

Fast forward nine months or so. A few weeks ago over lunch, Addie says to me, "Mom, you know what? I learned that if you want Santa to bring you something you want for Christmas, you shouldn't ask him. Because I wanted a hair salon for Christmas and instead I got Baby Alive. Mommy, I didn't even WANT Baby Alive."

Alrighty then. A little reverse psychology on Santa. Well played, Addie.

Her birthday was just a few weeks after this conversation, and so what was she asking for? That's right. The hair salon.

And this time, it was in stock. In places other than Dallas.

Here's the part where Gary and I become heroes: we got it for her for her 5th birthday last week.

If you could have been there when she opened that present, you'd have thought she'd opened the door to the Publisher's Clearing House Prize Patrol. But instead of $1 million dollars, it was just a cheap, plastic, probably-going-to-break-in-a-week hair salon.

She's in heaven with this thing.

Ha! Santa ain't got NOTHIN' on us!

And for the record, I definitely don't want these boots, or this necklace for Christmas. Got that, Santa?